End of Year Wrap Up   The Haleiwa Pro was contested last week, ending the challenger series and the professional competitive year as a whole. Hawaii’s favorite son John John Florence was in peak form, winning the event once again and ending the year on a high note after suffering an injury mid-season that caused him to miss a number of events and his chance at fighting for the world title at Trestles. It was great to see Florence back in form and healed up from his knee injury. Hopefully he can stay healthy this coming season! On the women’s side, Australian Sophie McCulloch surfed her way through through the event from the early rounds, ending the year with a fairy tale finish that saw her not only win at Haleiwa, but earn enough points to qualify for the championship tour in 2023. The result was a dream come true for the young surfer, who faced down a stacked field and a huge amount of pressure to take home the trophy and claim her spot on surfing’s biggest stage next season. Sophie McCulloch joins fellow qualifiers Betty Lou Sakura, Macy Callaghan, Molly Picklum, and fellow Oneill teammate Caitlin Simmers. The...

It was a nonstop day of action at Lower Trestles today as the WSL sought to finish the Rip Curl World Surf League Finals before bad weather from Hurricane Kay impacts Southern California.   In a pair of marathon displays of athleticism, both Steph Gilmore and Italo Ferreira surfed their way from match one all the way to the final, contesting three heats each to earn the right to face off against top-seeded Carissa Moore and Felipe Toledo in a best-of-three showdown for the world championship. Gilmore beat Brisa Hennessey, Tatiana Weston-Webb and Johanne Defay on her way to the title bout, while Italo Ferreira was completely dominant in his rout of Kanoa Igarashi, Ethan Ewing, and Jack Robinson.   But the two underdogs saw their paths diverge as they hit the finals. While Gilmore continued her form and ended up dispatching Carissa Moore two heats in a row to clinch her eighth world title (breaking her tie with Layne Beachley for the all-time record), Italo ran out of steam and was unable to match Toledo’s fresh legs and preternatural speed. Toledo and Gilmore both won two heats straight, dismissing the need for a third heat and ending the day...

Photo Credit to WSL After nine months of waiting, the WSL World Championship event is finally here. The waiting period for the 10-person event (top five women and men) at Lower Trestles runs from September 8-16, and the event is already on yellow alert to run tomorrow, September 8 (the first day of the waiting period). With Hurricane Kay bearing down on California and likely to bring adverse wind, it is likely that the WSL will want to get the event done as soon as possible, so we expect it to run tomorrow. We have discussed the format for the event previously, but as a quick refresher, the fifth seeded surfer will contest an elimination heat against the fourth seeded surfer. The winner will then surf an elimination heat against the third seeded surfer. From there, the winner will surf against the second seeded surfer. And finally, the winner of that heat will contest a best-of-three-heats final with the top seeded surfer, with the winner declared the world champion.   Coming into the event, the seeding breakdown is as follows: Photo Credit to WSL Photo Credit to WSL   The WSL World Championships can be viewed directly on www.worldsurfleague.com. Tune...

The world tour is finally in Tahiti, and the final event of the season is ready to kick off at Teahupoo. Unfortunately, a lack of swell and weird local winds have resulted in a week of lay days, and it’s still uncertain when the event might start. There is swell today and tomorrow, but the wind looks weird, so we are currently on hold and awaiting the call. In the meantime, there are three new Kelly Slater Lost Tapes films to help satisfy our hunger for world tour action. In episode 8, Golden Opportunity, Slater travels with team USA to Miyazaki, Japan, for the first time since 1990, to compete for a spot at the Olympics. Video Credit to WSL YouTube  The free surfs and competition give him an opportunity to reminisce on his past visits to the area. Then, in episode 9, The Perfect Wave, Slater returns to the wave he designed in Lemoore, California, for the Surf Ranch Pro, where he is both host and competitor.  Video Credit to WSL YouTube  Finally, in this week’s release, The Old World, the tour heads to Europe, where Slater reconnects with one of his oldest and closest friends Stephen “Belly” Bell,...

When the government of El Salvador decided to invest tens of millions of dollars in their “Surf City” rebranding—including millions for the right to host a world tour event at the country’s crown jewel of Punta Roca—we are guessing their plan wasn’t to broadcast a bunch of small, onshore days to the world. Unfortunately, you can plan a pretty event, but you can’t predict the weather, and the perfect right-hand point break in La Libertad had a pretty horrible forecast during the entire event waiting period. After half a dozen flat days, the event finally ran in bumpy, mixed-up swell rather than perfect, peeling walls, so it ended up being all about the surfers rather than the wave. As you’d expect, the high-flying, high-performance crew thrived in the punchy, messy conditions, and by finals day it was a who’s who of surfing’s most progressive athletes. On the men’s side, that included three Australians (back-to-back event winner Jack Robinson, style master Ethan Ewing, and young upstart Callum Robson), three Brazilians (Gabriel Medina, Italo Ferreira, and Felipe Toledo—no surprises there), and two Californians (Griffin Colapinto and Kanoa Igarashi, the latter of whom is technically surfing under the Japanese flag). By the time...

Understanding the World Surf League’s Mid-Year Cutoff and What It Means for Our Favorite World Tour Competitors If you’re as big a fan of professional surfing as we are, then you may have found yourself wondering what the commentary team at the Bells Beach Pro were talking about when they kept referencing the mid-year cutoff. For those of you who still don’t fully understand the World Surf League’s new format—and we don’t blame you, because it’s painfully complicated—here’s a comprehensive explanation of how it works and how it affects your favorite competitors. First of all, as in year’s past, the WSL Championship tour has 10 stops. The biggest differences in the schedule this year is that the men and women are surfing all 10 stops together, as well as the fact that Sunset, G-Land, and El Salvador are all on tour this year, while Snapper Rocks, Mexico, and Fiji are not. Oh, and just for good measure, the tour started in Hawaii this year instead of ending here. Halfway through the season, after five events have been contested (Pipeline, Sunset, Supertubos in Portugal, and Bells Beach and Margaret River in Australia), there is a mid-year cutoff. At this point, the...

WSL World Tour Starts at Pipeline on January 29 Photo By @adventures_ofjess   After an abbreviated 2021 season and a three-month hiatus, the world’s best surfers are dusting off their jerseys this month and getting ready to battle it out for the 2022 world title. While the world tour historically ended in Hawaii, the WSL adopted a new schedule last year that sees the tour start here on Oahu instead. The first event of the season kicks off at Pipeline with a waiting period from January 29 through February 10, and the world’s best are already in town warming up. After an epic showing at Da Hui Backdoor Shootout last week, both world tour competitors and local wildcards alike are fired up to compete at the heaviest wave on the planet, and with the epic run of surf and pristine conditions we have had all month, there’s a good chance the waves will be firing for the event. After Pipe, the second event of the season will be contested at Sunset Beach, which means that the rankings will be well-established by the time the tour leaves Hawaii. Based on his performances over the past few months (winning both the Haleiwa...

Surf Blog: Rain Swell and Last Contest of the Year PHOTO CREDIT TO WSL It has been a rainy, unruly week here in Hawaii, with a huge, super northerly swell intersecting with raging Kona winds and lots of rain. The entire state has been put on a state of emergency, Big Island had a blizzard conditions at high elevations with upwards of a foot of snow, and a handful of surf spots fired under the rare conditions, while everywhere else was pretty bad. But amongst all the chaos, the World Surf League got down to business, completing the last Challenger Series event of the year at Haleiwa. The Challenger Series is the new qualifying series, so there were a lot of people whose tour aspirations hung in the balance at this event. Despite the fact that the event was held in big, crazy conditions at Alii Beach Park, the cream ended up rising to the top. At the end of the day, Hawaiians and world tour surfers dominated, and a new crop of rookies earned their way onto tour.   PHOTO CREDIT TO WSL   In the men’s event, it was all John John Florence all the way through. No...

The Quiksilver Pro and Roxy Pro France ended this week, and with them came some major developments for the world title race. First, on the ladies’ side, Steph Gilmore had a chance to make history. She has won six world titles already—just one shy of Layne Beachley’s record of seven—and is widely considered to be the greatest female competitive surfer in history. The opportunity was there for her to clinch her seventh title in France—all she had to do was finish one round ahead of Lakey Peterson, who trails Steph but is still mathematically in contention for the title. But Steph ended up coming up just short in her round three heat, missing out on progressing by a mere 0.06 points! Lakey then had a chance to make up some ground on Steph, but ended up losing in the very next heat, so both women left France with equal 9th place finishes—hardly a keeper result on a tour with only 17 women. Courtney Conlogue ended up winning the event, demonstrating a return to form after an injury-plagued season. The ladies now enter their last event of the season—Honolua Bay on Maui—with Steph Gilmore sitting pretty approximately 7000 points ahead of...

Drug Aware Margaret River Pro Going Small to Go Big The Drug Aware Margaret River Pro is on this week over in West Australia, the second stop on the WSL world tour. And to be honest, the main venue at Margaret River Main Break is not the most exciting wave in the world to surf or watch. The backup venues of North Point and The Box are exciting—North Point is the ultimate barrel to boost setup, and The Box is one of the original slabs—but we usually don’t get more than a day of competition at the backups, which is why this event is rumored to be canceled after this season. Main Break is simply not that good of a wave—it’s slopey and fat, basically a big series of cutbacks with an air section at the end of the right if you are lucky (and crazy enough to huck one into the bricks). And unfortunately, it’s where we end up running 90% of our heats at the Margaret River Pro. No wonder guys like Kelly Slater complain about the event every year. But once in awhile, Main Break brings the drama. And this past weekend was one of those rare...