Gabriel Medina in the 2019 Margaret River Pro at The Box on June 1, 2019. Photo: WSL//Cestari
Every year, without fail, surf fans call for the WSL to run heats at The Box during the Margaret River Pro. Much to the chagrin of those fans, that hasn’t happened for more than five years now. That gnarly slab breaking over a piece of Western Australian reef is a fickle beast. Winds don’t always cooperate. Swell directions and intervals don’t always cooperate. And sometimes, we’re tortured with freesurf highlights from the barreling wave on the north side of the Margaret River river mouth while the league puts competition on hold less than 1,000 yards away down at Main Break.
That streak may end this week though. The WSL announced its plan Tuesday to move the men’s Round of 16 over to the Box when and if competition resumes on Wednesday, May 21 — conditions permitting, of course.
“We’ve been setting up through the day today,” Jessi Miley-Dyer announced. “Everything’s there, forecast looks good, and you know, if we don’t get the waves that we’re hoping for we’ll come back to Main Break.”
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The last time The Box saw CT action was on June 1 of the 2019 Margaret River Pro. The men surfed 12 heats in the Round of 32 before things were moved back to Main Break, and while most of those heats weren’t high-scoring, the men put on a show.
A tone was set first thing in the morning when Leo Fioravanti dislocated his shoulder in the morning freesurf. He was forced to withdraw from the rest of the event and then sat out the next four stops on tour before coming back later that year and reaching the semifinal of the Rip Curl Pro France.
“Oh, the pain was something I’ve never even come close to,” he said after the spill at The Box. “The doctors said I got really lucky, that I hit the rock a bit lower on my spine. They said that if I had hit the rock a bit higher on my back it would have hit the spinal cord and I could have been paralyzed… I literally couldn’t breathe for 10 seconds, and then every time I took a breathe it was excruciating pain.”
So yeah, running at The Box is no joke.
