Gotta get one in before the comp window. Photo: The Cola Bros//Screenshot
I’ve got a new idea for potential changes to the Championship Tour. Hear me out: what if the WSL announced contest windows publicly but secretly got the green light on permits for the three-ish days before each event? This way that inevitable pre-comp window before at least a handful of events each season — the one where athletes get into town and score obscene freesurfs, just in time for the ocean to shut down on (lay)Day 1 of the comp window — is transformed into an exciting Round 1 of the event.
I imagine they could get away with maybe half of one season before the surf gods caught onto their racket.
The powers that be at league HQ on the west side of Los Angeles don’t have any control over conditions, of course. The season schedule is meticulously planned to coordinate with optimum swell windows, but it never fails that some of the most iconic waves on the planet seem to take mental health weeks when surf fans, CT surfers themselves, and contest directors are hoping for those same waves to light up.
There should be data on how often this happens. It seems like it occurs at least half of each season, but I’m not going to pretend this is anything more than built-in bias at this point. And if we’re being real, that’s not terrible for planning out 12 contests spanning nine months and nine countries. And technically, the WSL only needs three days to complete a contest. As fans, maybe we just pay more attention to the number of flat days with no green light because they outnumber the days we see heats…by design. The point is, we all take notice when contest sites go off in the days leading up to an event.
The “You Should Have Seen It Before the Comp Widow” effect is settling in one week into the CT season. Not quite mid-season form. This isn’t G-Land in 2022.
Here’s Griffin Colapinto just before the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach contest window opened up (from about the 12-minute mark onward). Not exactly the conditions that were served up for his first actual heat of the season a few days later.
