Gabriel Medina, the most in-form surfer on the planet at the moment. Photo: Cestari/WSL
Despite the online negativity from fans, the acerbic comments and general egginess, watching professional athletes get a wave on absolute lock and then make it their baby is still pretty damn fun. Especially if you’re at the venue. So pardon my lack of cynicism, my naivete to what “core” surfing is or should be. Admittedly, there was some safe surfing in the early rounds. And yes, hack after vertical hack does get overly repetitious. But when it came down to brass tax, watching Filipe Toledo and Gabriel Medina and Julian Wilson and Owen Wright throw an array of airs from Kerrupt flips to alley-oops to clean backflips, and Lakey Peterson and Joann Dufay generally raise the level of women’s surfing in pressure-packed moments was fun. I count myself lucky.
Medina, above every other surfer on the Ranch, owned the stable. He looked in complete control from the beginning, a predator mentality able to execute the exact turn he needed when he needed it, faking like he was going to tuck into frontside barrels before launching into impeccably placed alley-oops. “I honestly just love the pressure,” he told me. “I don’t know, that’s just when I perform my best. My mom says I’m really cold inside.”
But there’s the really interesting polarity with Gabriel Medina. When you meet him, and talk to him, he gives off a fairly chill vibe. He doesn’t come off like a stone-cold competitor. “My day-to-day, I’m really a cruisy guy,” he said. “I love staying at home doing nothing with my friends and family. But it’s contest mode. It’s what I was born for. When You do it for love and have a goal, that’s what happens. Winning is the consequence of that.”
That win shoots Medina to the top of the leader board, fully in control of the world title race.
On the women’s side, if you compared last year to this iteration, you could literally see the evolution of the sport. The barrel rides were deeper and cleaner (Johanne Defay), the fins seemed way looser (Courtney Conlogue) and the combination of both power and progression were on display in a very real way (Lakey Peterson, Carissa Moore).
Lakey Peterson just had the biggest come-from-behind win of her career. Photo: Miers/WSL
Lakey Peterson pulled out what she considered the biggest Hail Mary of her career, scoring two nine-plus point waves on her final to take out Defay, who surfed as well as she ever has (the commentating team actually did a segment comparing one of her deep barrels to Yago Dora’s and Kelly Slater called it the “deepest” he’d ever seen here). “That was my biggest come-from-behind win ever,” an emotional Peterson told us after. “I needed two nines to do it so it really was just a Hail Mary. Which actually took a lot of pressure off me. I was like, ‘alright well, I’m just gonna send it on both these waves.’ And I somehow just pulled it.”
Peterson fought through a back injury the last month and called this year a grind. “All the girls are ripping and a lot of time that brings a lot of doubt into my own mind,” she said. “It’s incredible to know I can rise to the occasion and that all just came out of me at the end.”
Peterson took a major leap in a title chase that has been way underplayed for her this year as she was under the microscope all season last year wearing the yellow jersey. The $100,000 win moved Peterson to second on the Jeep Leader board, just under 4,000 points behind Moore. Sally Fitzgibbons, Stephanie Gilmore, and Caroline Marks round out the top five.
As for the negativity towards the contest, apart from adding set waves to the Surf Ranch, where surfers actually have to surf under priority and adding more variety to the actual shape of the waves, it’s difficult to see it ever totally satisfying viewership and we obviously won’t know if the event will remain on tour for some time (even though Sophie Goldschmidt hinted that it might in the closing ceremonies when she told the crowd the WSL would see them next year. It was also rumored there would be an athlete vote on the Freshwater Pro’s fate after the event). That said, a lot of the competitors seem to be having the time of their lives. But that’s pretty much a given when you’re getting paid to ride perfect waves.
