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,...

Oi Rio Pro 2022 Anyone who underestimates the power of the yellow jersey needs to look no further than the Oi Rio Pro this past week. Photo Credit to WSL Coming into the event, Felipe Toledo had a commanding lead on the men’s tour and Carissa narrowly led the women (despite the fact that Carissa hadn’t yet won an event this year). The confidence of coming into a clutch event as the tour leader gives you a bit of extra oomph when it comes to winning heats—and both Felipe and Carissa rode their momentum straight into the finals, and ultimately to event wins. Carissa’s second event victory in Rio solidifies her spot atop the rankings with two events to go before the world championship event at Lower Trestles in September. She is currently around 5000 points ahead of Johanne Defay and more than 10,000 points ahead of third-rated Lakey Peterson. Carissa is the first woman to clinch her spot at the year-end championship event and will likely come into the event as the top seed, which provides a huge advantage, since the top-rated surfer automatically advances to the final round. Photo Credit to WSL The two events left on the...

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...

WSL Longboard Tour Is ON!   Now that the WSL shortboarding world tour has ended for the season, the focus has moved to the longboard tour, which has two championship events on the roster, as well as a 1000-point qualifier in Brazil in November. The longboard world tour kicks off this week on September 29, as 36 of the world’s best longboarders (18 men and 18 women) head to the Surf Ranch in Lemoore, California. The world’s most famous wave pool hosted a specialty longboard event in 2020, but this is the first time that results at the Surf Ranch will count toward the cumulative world title. Kelly Slater’s wave is well-suited to longboarding, as it is a long, perfect, relatively sectionless peeler that tops out at around chest- to head-high—pretty much every longboarders dream setup. While the Cuervo Surf Ranch Classic is the first longboard world tour event of 2021, 🤙🤙 the rankings from the abbreviate 2020 season are still in play when it comes to crowning a world champion. Points from the February 2020 event at Noosa Heads, Australia, will be combined with points from the Surf Ranch, and the final event of the 2020/21 world tour will follow shortly...

"Natxo Gonzalez falling out of the sky at Pe'ahi in 2016. Photo: WSL/Richard Hallman"   Natxo Gonzalez Paddles Historic Barrel at Nazare Challenge The Nazare Challenge went down in near-flawless conditions last week, with 15-20+ waves and light offshore winds. Spanish charger and surf explorer Natxo Gonzalez was one of the standout performers, making the final and ending up in third place (which also positions him well for the world title race, since there are only three events each year). And while Grant “Twiggy” Baker ended up winning the event, Natxo stole the day with what most agree is the best wave ever ridden at Nazare, and one of the most impressive big-wave barrels ever paddles. On a solid 18-foot double up, Natxo spun under the lip and backdoored a throaty lefthand tube that chandeliered twice before ejecting him out into the channel. Barrels are rare at Nazare, and this one was a 10 before he even came out, but the fact that Natxo made the tube means it will likely be in contention for ride of the year at the Big Wave Awards. We had a chat with Natxo a few days after his monumental ride, to get his...

Credit: @ WSL / Poullenot After an epic late summer/early fall, winter has started off pretty slow here in Hawaii. Town is heading into its winter slumber, and while there have been a couple of decent pulses on the North Shore, none of them have really set the buoys off. But that’s not to say that the big wave season hasn’t started. In fact, over in Europe, Nazare has been going ballistic for the past two weeks—and things are about to ramp up even more today. The World Surf League has called the Nazare Challenge on for Friday the 16th, and the conditions are forecasted to be pretty much perfect. It won’t be the biggest Nazare we have ever seen—probably in the 20- to 35-foot range on the face—but the wind should be light offshore and the ocean should be about as smooth as it gets at Praia de Norte, so the Big Wave Tour should be kicking off with a bang. Then, to make things even more exciting, the swell from hell is bearing down on Europe and expected to hit sometime Sunday morning. This one is also going to have perfect conditions in many places, but it’s so big...