Ella Williams

Ella Williams (born 13 January 1995) is a surfer from Whangamatā, New Zealand. At age 18, she became junior world champion in Florianópolis, Brazil. She is set to compete in the inaugural shortboard surfing competition at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Biography Williams was born in 1995. Born into a family of surfers (her parents Dean and Janine own a surf shop), she started surfing aged four at Raglan. She entered her first surfing competition when she was six, starting in the under-12 category. Aged seven, her family moved to Whangamatā on the Coromandel Peninsula; the beach is known for its good surfing conditions and it is where the Williams family took over the local surf shop in 2002. At Whangamatā, she attended Whangamatā Area School but by her own admission, she "wasn't very good at school".

When she was eight, Williams wrote on a surf poster that she wanted to be world champion and hung it up at her bed so that she would see it whenever she woke up. She started winning competitions from aged 14, much to the complaints of the boys she was beating. In the following year, Williams turned professional.

In April 2021, Williams attracted attention by expressing hesitancy to the COVID-19 vaccine despite the "strong" encouragement by the International Olympic Committee and the New Zealand Olympic Committee. Within weeks, she changed her mind and got vaccinated.