The question is: Will he try it again in round three against Gabriel Medina? Photo: Ed Sloane//WSL//screenshot
Raglan, New Zealand’s Championship Tour debut reminded me more of my years groveling in Southern California than a dream tour event. Apparently, Filipe Toledo felt the same way, opting to screw a two-plus-one fin arrangement into a wide, swallowtail board with low rocker, saying that he had been using it “for so many years in groveler waves in California and Brazil.”
Toledo’s experiment paid off with a seven-turn wave that earned the highest wave score (8.83) of the day.
“I chose different equipment for this heat, surfing on a Modern 2,” Toledo said in the WSL’s press release. “It’s a model that Marcio (Zouvi) worked on for a few years, and we came up with that model.”
Toledo said he had had that board in mind when told that holding speed is particularly crucial at Raglan.
“I’ve seen a lot of people actually say, ‘It’s a tricky wave to surf,’ and ‘You need a lot of speed,’ because sometimes it goes from flat sections to steep sections, and you got to keep your flow, keep your speed,” Toledo said. “And that board was actually giving me everything that I needed on the wave, because with other boards that I was trying, I was just kind of thinking about it too much, and with the speed, the two-plus-one with the model, and everything, there was nothing else for me to worry about, just surf and place the turns on the right spot of the wave, and that’s what I did.”
View this post on Instagram
The board and fin setup caught the attention of 11-time world champ, Kelly Slater, who once paddled out into the 2019 Olympic qualifiers on an unconventionally wide board with quad fins.
“Reminds me of Dane (Reynolds) taking out a Merrick twin in France years ago and just blazing everyone in small stuff,” Slater commented on journalist Nick Carroll’s Instagram post. “See if you can find that. He might have been against Roy Powers? Little lefts on the backhand as well.”
We’ll see if Toledo dares to ride the unique equipment in his Round 3 matchup against rankings leader Gabriel Medina.
