Erin Brooks and Miguel Pupo improved their positions in the title races with wins at Lower Trestles. Photo: Emma Sharon//Pat Nolan//WSL
Erin Brooks has entered an exclusive category of surf legends after winning her third consecutive Championship Tour event at the WSL Trestles Pro. Kelly Slater won three in a row in 1996. Tom Curren did it in 1986 and 1990. Sofia Mulanovich did it in 2004. Steph Gilmore did it in 2008. (The list goes on during the ASP era.) Those surfers listed went on to win world titles in the years they accomplished the feat. Now, Erin Brooks has thrust herself into the mix with three events remaining.
Heading into Tahiti, Brooks had looked out of sorts. She was ranked 18th and had not passed round two all season. But she’s looked like a completely different surfer since. She won in Tahiti, Fiji, and Trestles to move up to number five in the rankings, less than 5,000 points off the leader, Gabriela Bryan, whom Brooks bested in today’s final.
“If you told me at stop number seven that I’d be where I am right now, I wouldn’t believe you,” Brooks said in her Trestles Pro post-win interview. “It just made me want to work even harder, and now I’ve gotten to this point, and I want to keep going.”
Erin Brooks showed how she can win in any conditions, big or small. Photo: Pat Nolan//WSL
Miguel Pupo reminded us all that, despite being one of the oldest surfers on tour at 34, he’s still relevant in the men’s title race. He defeated Kanoa Igarashi to take the Trestles win, his second of the season, and passed up Gabriel Medina for fourth position in the rankings.
“Two wins in the same year, I just can’t believe it,” Pupo said. “After 14 years (on tour), it took me 10 to get my first win, and now I’ve got two in the same year, which is incredible.”
Pupo had to get through local powerhouse Cole Houshmand to get to the final. Houshmand had just dropped the event’s best heat in the quarterfinals with an 18.50 total. But Pupo took him out with an 8.33 wave in the semis, carrying his moment through to the final. His 8.5 was the best wave of the final, as his 14.77 total nudged him ahead of Igarashi’s 14.40. It was the second year in a row that Igarashi had lost in the Trestles final.
Even at 34, Miguel Pupo’s career isn’t fading away. Photo: Emma Sharon//WSL
Brooks took out three world champions in her route to the final — Caroline Marks, Carissa Moore, then Molly Picklum. She used both her forehand and backhand approach in bumpy Trestles conditions to defeat Bryan, 13 points to 11.9.
The Trestles Pro shook up both the men’s and women’s title race. For the men, Yago Dora jumped from third to first, seizing the opportunity after Leo Fioravanti, Gabriel Medina, and Italo Ferreira lost early. Bryan also used her runner-up performance to swap the top women’s spot with Moore, who finished 5th in the event.
After the Trestles Pro, the regular season is complete, and three postseason events remain. The tour will be trimmed to 22 men and 14 women for Portugal and Cloud 9, then all competitors will head to Pipeline to round out the year with 1.5 times the points on the line for the season finale.
Notably, Jake Marshall and Baron Mamiya tied for the final 22nd spot to make the men’s cut. Looking at the WSL rulebook (page 9), the tie-breaker goes to the surfer with the best result. But the two surfers have identical results. The next tie-breaker is heats won, but both surfers have won five heats this season. The final tie-breaker is average heat total. That’s where Marshall’s 11.59 total edged out Mamiya’s 11.40.
The tour now heads to Supertubos, where Caroline Marks and Yago Dora took the wins last year.
