Yo’s endless positivity has certainly helped her cause. Photo: Kenny Morris//World Surf League
Right now, on the Challenger Series, Yolanda Hopkins Sequeira is sandwiched between the ratings leader Tya Zebrowski and No. 3 Sally Fitzgibbons. Fourteen-year-old Zebrowski, born in Tahiti to an Olympic snowboarder dad and professional skiing mum, is a future world champion. Sally Fitz is an OG of the sport and one of Australia’s most recognized athletes. And Yo? Well, Yo is Yo, one of the hardest-working and underrated athletes in surfing. In 2025, though, could the Portuguese natural foot finally achieve her lifelong goal and make the Championship Tour?
“I was never going to be that graceful surfer in a bikini, and I respect anyone who surfs that way, but it just wasn’t me,” she told The Inertia. “That may have cost me in terms of endorsements early on, but I wanted to be respected for my surfing. I never doubted my commitment or ability. I’ve just had to forge my own path.”
With three of the seven events completed on the Challenger Series, Hopkins is sitting in a good position to qualify in one of the top seven spots. Yet, no one knows more than the 27-year-old just how cruel the CS can be. In 2022, with surfing’s second tier finishing in Haleiwa, she had to make three heats to claim her CT status. While standing just 5’2”, she backs herself when conditions get serious. With a low centre of gravity, incredible fitness levels (more on that later), and surfing based on power, she prefers waves with real push. Or as she puts it, “I don’t like small, snatchy surfing and I don’t like to hold back.”
However, after getting through her first heat, she received the news that her father had died. The former European Champion professional snooker player had died suddenly of an aneurysm. “It kinda killed me inside, and I couldn’t stay in the moment with all that happening back home,” she recalled. “I was in the heat, crying. I fell apart,”
Yet Hopkins is good at putting herself back together. As a teenager growing up in the Algarve, she had suffered a series of allergies, plus bronchitis and asthma. She was prescribed cortisone, which helped initially with her breathing, but meant that she put on weight, and couldn’t shift it, no matter what the regime. She remembers weighing almost 80 kilograms (176 pounds) at one stage, and questioning whether surfing would still be a part of her life.
She says that when she started working with her coach John Trantor, who runs the Pig Dog Surf School near Sines, on the Atlantic Coast about 200 kilometres south of Lisbon, as a pivotal moment in her career. Living with her Welsh-born mum, Yolanda would go to school Monday to Friday and catch a bus up to Sines every weekend, a six-hour round trip.
Trantor was ex-Cornwall and ex-Army. His training methods of push-ups, soft sand sprints, 10-mile runs, chin-ups, and generally pushing your body through pain might not have been on the curriculum at Surfing Australia’s High Performance Surf Centre at Casuarina, but they lit a fire for Yo.
“John and his family took me in. He got me on this full program, and it was a life changer,” she said. “He had to push me to get to the stage where I wanted to do it for myself. Then after that, everything clicked.”
As her fitness improved, the allergies disappeared. She stopped the cortisone and the issues with her weight ended. The dedication to the program never did. I’ve worked at all the CS and the European QS events over the past five years and, without fail, Yolanda is always the first surfer in the water in the morning. And not only is she out at first light, but invariably she has done a run or bike ride before her dawn surf session. In preparation for the Tokyo Olympics, she averaged 12 hours a day of training in a rotation of runs, workouts, and surf drills. An average day is a few surfs and a couple of different gym sessions. She is absolutely relentless.
Is this Yolanda’s year? The CT still awaits. Photo: Hannah Anderson//World Surf League
The program has achieved success. She has been a multiple times European Champion and finished in eighth on the CS in 2024. She had the Olympic rings tattooed with Tokyo 2020 on her arm after she finished fifth in Japan. She then added Paris 2024 last year after qualifying to compete at Teahupo’o. She says, with the trademark glint in her eye, that she has left some skin for L.A. (2028) and Brisbane (2032).
For perhaps the first time in her career, her boards are now plastered with the stickers of major sponsors placed around her signature double-deck grip. She has support within the surf industry from O’Neill and also partnerships with Portugal-based banks and electric car brands.
She’s carved her own path, in her own way, and the surf industry has, perhaps, finally caught up. Hard work, core surf talent, and relentless positive energy don’t need a bikini. But she still hasn’t achieved the ultimate career-high she craves: a spot on the CT.
In 2025, on the CS, she has made the quarters at Newcastle and Huntington, and the final at Ballito. With four more events remaining in the expanded series, including Pipeline, she’s well placed. But as she knows all too well, nowhere near safe.
“I’m not even trying to think about surfing Pipeline, which I’m absolutely frothing on,” she said. “It’s Portugal first, and then I’ll take it heat by heat. I’ll stick to my path, focus on my surfing, enjoy life, and I won’t stop till I make the CT.”
There are few surfers who deserve it more.
