Jack Robinson was a long shot to make the WSL Finals just a few weeks ago. His best bet to leapfrog enough people in the Championship Tour rankings to make it into the Final 5 was to just go out and win the Tahiti Pro. In fact, the way things played out, it ended up being his only play. Had he lost the Final of the Tahiti Pro to Griffin Colapinto, Robo would have finished with 45,345 points on the season — about 400 points behind Kanoa Igarashi and in the ballpark of about 1,000 points shy of Ethan Ewing. Ewing would be in Fiji right now and Robo would have finished his season ranked 7th overall.
Instead, the Robinson family are the ones in Fiji and Jack has a first round heat set up against Italo Ferreira.
The only thing still left up in the air is whether or not the WSL will make the call to run Finals Day at Cloudbreak as it had originally planned, or if they’ll move the event to Restaurants.
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There’s been enough chatter of the potential shift that you wouldn’t be foolish to bet on it. Still, the surfers themselves have to be prepared for anything, and that means freesurfs at Cloudbreak are still a necessity. Robinson gave some notes on the heavy left-hander, pointing out that “even if it doesn’t look that big, it’s really powerful.”
He also added that the wave is far more technical than you’d think.
“You wouldn’t really see it from the boat,” he says. “But the waves are really bumpy, so when you’re in the barrel, there’s a lot going on. It’s like you’re going up and down over the bumps and trying to navigate not getting hit by the lip or the foam ball. You have to really be aware inside the tube.”
