Hello everyone.
I just got back from the Surf Ranch Pro which completed on Sunday afternoon with Hawaii’s Carissa Moore and Brazil’s Gabriel Medina winning the event. But I am absolutely exhausted, so I apologize if it sounds like I’m rambling in this blog post.
For me, it’s always interesting because growing up and surfing, watching surf events, it seemed back then that it was always Hawaiians (who are Americans) vs. Americans (from the Mainland), before anyone gets confused by this, Hawaii has always been considered its own sovereign surfing nation. That’s all you need to know!
And then it seemed as if it was always the Americans vs. the Australians.
And while we still see that, especially in the women’s surfing competitions may it be Australians Stephanie Gilmore or Tyler Wright vs. Americans Lakey Peterson or Caroline Marks vs. Hawaii’s Carissa Moore and then you have Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb.
And for men’s surfing, the Brazilians are absolutely tearing things up .
Gabriel Medina, Filipe Toledo, Italo Ferreira are dominating and it has now become more of the Brazilians vs. Australians (Julian Wilson or Owen Wright).
The Brazilian storm in surfing has been ongoing since 2014, in fact, the New York Times of all newspapers, have done an article on this.
But what I will remember from the Surf Ranch Pro was to see the enthusiasm from Brazilian fans for the Brazilian competitors. For those who have watched Brazilian fans for football (soccer), you saw the positive Brazilian mojo from fans who cheered for Media and Toledo in the finals.
Yellow and green were no doubt the colors one probably saw a lot of this weekend. The support and love I saw from Brazilian fans in Lemoore, California (many who traveled a long way just to watch the surfing competitions) was quite wonderful to see.
As for Americans, currently only one American is in the top 10 in the 2018 WSL Men’s Championship Tour and that is Kolohe Andino at #8. Conner Coffin and Griffin Colapinto are #14 and #15, but looking at the top 20, it’s quite a diverse ranking and fascinating to see how the landscape has changed considerably.
The Brazilians have really inspired grommets of how one can surf but also do something with their life and for those who have watched films or documentaries on Brazilian surfing, many live in poverty. Surfing is more than just a hobby, they are driven by competition but also knowing they could also help them and their families and escape poverty. But most of all, make a name and establish dominance in another sport for their country.
For me, I grew up watching American Tom Curren, Hawaii’s Derek and Michael Ho and Sunny Garcia, Australia’s power surfers Martin Potter, Tom Carroll and come on, who couldn’t resist Mark (Occy) Occhilupo (Curren vs. Occy was an awesome surf rivalry).
Watching one of the greatest rivalries between America’s Kelly Slater vs. Hawaii’s Andy Irons way back then was fascinating. They brought the best out of each other and were true competitors right to the end.
But what about now? With the Brazilian men’s surfers dominating the scene, who are today’s rivals? We have see Hawaii’s John John Florence being an obstacle to Medina especially in 2017. While it was a bummer that we wouldn’t see the John John Florence vs. Gabriel Medina rivalry in 2018 after Florence suffered a high grade partial tear to his right ACL back in July
Back in the day, when I thought about Brazilian surfing, I thought about Fabio Gouveia or Flavio Padaratz, guys with potential. But now, you have many names with a very impressive skillset, that you can’t help but see if anyone has what it takes to beat the Brazilians because right now, for the time being, they seem unstoppable.
So far, I have to say that I’m impressed with the Brazilian surfers and how far they have come and how they are storming in on the championship tour.
But I often wonder, for American surfing, will we ever have someone as dominant as Tom Curren or Kelly Slater was?
I guess we will wait and see…
