WSL Rip Curl Guide 2023

EVENT GUIDE RIP CURL

WSL FINALS AT LOWER TRESTLES

SEPTEMBER 8-16, 2023

Photo:CourtesyofMattDunbar/WorldSurfLeague

The 2023 Rip Curl WSL Finals: How It Works

The format for how the 2023 World Champions will be crowned at Lower Trestles

By Jake Howard

Aone-day, winner-take-all affair, the stakes couldn’t be higher at the Rip Curl WSL Finals.

After eight months traversing the globe on the Championship Tour, the top five men and top five women in the world are set to battle it out for surfing’s ultimate prize: the world title.

Here’s how the 2023 Rip Curl WSL Finals format works:

THE BASICS

The Rip Curl WSL Finals will take place at Lower Trestles and feature the WSL Final 5, comprising the top five men and top five women on the WSL’s Championship Tour leaderboard at the end of the 2023 regular season.

The WSL Final 5 is decided based on points accrued during the regular CT season.

The Rip Curl WSL Finals waiting period will run from Sept. 8-16. This nine-day waiting period marks Lowers’ peak season to maximize potential for epic surf.

THE FORMAT

At the end of the regular season, the No. 1-rated male and No. 1-rated female surfer will both receive a bid directly into the Rip Curl WSL Finals’ Title Match, a best-of-three showdown to determine the World Champion.

The remaining surfers will enter the Rip Curl WSL Finals bracket based on their year-end rankings.

Match 1: The No. 5-ranked surfer will compete against the fourth-ranked surfer in the first match of the day in a head-to-head heat.

Match 2: The winner of Match 1 will then face off against the No. 3-ranked surfer in a head-to-head heat.

Match 3: The winner of Match 2 will then face off against the No. 2-ranked surfer in a head-to-head heat.

Title Match: The winner of Match 3 will move on to the best-of-three Title Match, to face the World No. 1. The first surfer to win two out of three heats will be the undisputed 2023 World Champion.

Event Site at the Rip Curl WSL Finals on Sept. 8, 2022 in San Clemente.

(Photo: Courtesy of Pat Nolan/World Surf League

Crowd during the Rip Curl WSL Finals on Sept. 14, 2021 at Lower Trestles in San Clemente.

(Photo Courtesy of Thiago Diz/World Surf League)

The Hometown Hero Has Arrived

San Clemente’s Griffin Colapinto looks to be California’s first World Champion surfer in over 30 years

By Jake Howard

In 2021, Griffin Colapinto finished the season ranked No. 6 in the world.

Any other year on the Championship Tour, that would have been considered a successful campaign. But with the inaugural Rip Curl WSL Finals in play, in which only the top five surfers would compete in a one-day, winner-take-all event to determine the world title, Colapinto missed out on a shot at a world title.

To add insult to injury, the location for the finals was Lower Trestles, right in Colapinto’s backyard.

The next year, determined to qualify for the WSL Finals, Colapinto came up just short, finishing the season ranked seventh in the world.

Undaunted, the 25-year-old put his head down, refocused himself for 2023 and went to battle. By the time the Championship Tour pulled into Jeffreys Bay, South Africa in July, Colapinto had put together the best year of his professional life and clinched his spot in the 2023 Rip Curl WSL Finals.

“I was with my brother and my dad, and we were talking about the stress of the Final 5,” Colapinto said after getting the news that he was finally Finals-bound. “I honestly have PTSD from the last two years of just barely missing out … to do it now is just insane. Now I can go home and be a little more relaxed.”

After all the adversity, everything just seemed to click for Colapinto this year.

Piecing together an insanely consistent season on the Championship Tour, he made four finals appearances over the course of seven months and won the pressure cooker that is the Surf Ranch Pro.

He also made a pair of quarterfinal appearances along the way. Before the regular Championship Tour season was even over, Colapinto had clinched a spot in the WSL Finals and earned the opportunity to vie for a world title right in his own backyard at Lower Trestles.

In the process, he also locked in his spot for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, which will take place at Teahupoo in Tahiti next summer.

“My goals going into the year were to win three CT events, to make the Final 5, to qualify for the Olympics and win the world title,” explained Colapinto after bowing out of the Jeffreys Bay contest. “I’ve won one CT event, and I’ve qualified for both; the only thing left is to win the title. It’s so cool to put it down on paper and then feel it all come to life. I’m so grateful.”

Part of Colapinto’s secret sauce this season has been the hometown support and confidence instilled in him by his friends and family. With lifelong friend Kolohe Andino, he’s launched the wildly successful 2% Surf program in San Clemente with the goal of supporting and uplifting the town’s next generation of surf stars.

The results speak for themselves, as there are now five surfers (four men and one woman) from town who have the very real possibility of qualifying for the 2024 Championship Tour, including Colapinto’s younger brother, Crosby.

Should Crosby hold and qualify for the 2024 Championship Tour, we would be treated to an epic brotherly rivalry along the same lines as Bruce and Andy Irons, CJ and Damien Hobgood, and Michael and Derek Ho.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

What’s really inspiring about how Colapinto has handled himself this season is that whether he’s up or down, high or low, he graciously handles his business with a good-natured smile across his face.

At this level, the pressure and stress of a world title race are omnipresent, but true to his easy-going, fun-loving personality, he finds a way to keep things refreshingly loose.

And now with all that momentum and positive head space, Colapinto will soon attempt to become the first California surfer to win a world title since Tom Curren, all the way back in 1990.

Competing in his first WSL Finals event, he will have the benefit of home court advantage on his side. Growing up surfing Lowers, he’s been competing there since he was a kid, his dad’s a local lifeguard and schoolteacher, and his family’s deeply rooted in the community.

And as far as preparing for the WSL Finals, when he’s actually in town, Colapinto can be found down at Lowers often, dialing in boards and his bag of tricks, and feeding off the insane amount of talent in the water.

And speaking of said talent, come Finals day, all those surfers he calls friends, the whole 2% Surf crew, will be on the beach screaming their heads off every time Colapinto stands up on a wave.

The power of the hometown crowd can’t be underestimated. There are likely going to be thousands of people at Lowers supporting Colapinto. Talk about a local hero.

With an iron-willed work ethic, an unyielding dedication to his craft and an unbridled love for what he does, all of Colapinto’s passion and commitment are paying off in ways the Golden State hasn’t seen in decades.

“Thank you to the people that have believed in me all this time,” Colapinto shared on Instagram when he got the news he had officially qualified for the WSL Finals.

“Life is a roller coaster,” he continued. “We really don’t know what is good or bad, because what seems like a good thing could turn out to be a bad thing, and what seems like a bad thing could turn out to be a good thing. Back and forth, it goes. So, we accept the outcome and look at it in the most positive way possible. Sometimes, it’s not understandable, and that’s when we must trust. Everything happens for a reason. Lowers, Baby!”

Lowers, baby, indeed.

For the first time in the three-year history of the Rip Curl WSL Finals, San Clemente has a hometown hero to root for, and you better believe there’s not going to be an empty spot on the beach when he goes out and does his thing.

This is the stuff of which legends are made.

Griffin Colapinto after provisionally qualifying for the 2024 Olympics at the SHISEIDO Tahiti Pro on Aug. 16 at Teahupo’o, Tahiti, French Polynesia.

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Photo: Courtesy of Matt Dunbar/World Surf League)

Griffin Colapinto surfs in the Final at the Surf City El Salvador Pro on June 16 at Punta Roca, La Libertad, El Salvador. (Photo: Courtesy of Beatriz Ryder/World Surf League)

2023 Rip Curl WSL Finals: Who to Watch

From world champions to California upstarts, the lineup is packed with intrigue

By Jake Howard

Rampaging around the globe for the past seven months, from Pipeline to Teahupoo, the World Surf League’s season all comes down to the Rip Curl WSL Finals at Lowers Trestles, with the best male and female surfers in the world.

The WSL Finals features the top five men and top five women on the Championship Tour ratings at the end of the regular season, based on year-end rankings. The No. 1 seeds this year go to San Clemente resident and defending 2022 world champ Filipe Toledo and five-time world champ Carissa Moore.

The waiting period starts on Sept. 8. Here’s a rundown of competitors to keep an eye on:

MEN

1. Filipe Toledo

The defending world champion, Filipe Toledo will be a tough surfer to beat at Lowers. Doing so is going to take a superhuman effort.

In 2022, Toledo’s surfing was electric, as he outperformed his fellow competitors by a country mile. Riding a unique, four-fin, carbon-fiber surfboard, his equipment was as progressive and perfectly suited for the cobblestone break as his approach.

Because he is lightning-fast, dynamic and spontaneous, everything about watching Toledo in the water is exciting. His three wins during the 2023 Championship Tour regular season all came at right pointbreaks (Sunset Beach, Punta Roca and Jeffreys Bay), which bodes well for him at Lowers.

And over the past two years at the WSL Finals, we’ve seen how important experience is, which will undoubtedly give Toledo that added confidence as he looks to win back-to-back world titles.

The hometown hero, Griffin Colapinto is sure to see San Clemente’s full force of support. Putting together the best season of his career, the 25-year-old Lowers local made four finals appearances and won the Surf Ranch Pro en route to clinching his spot in the WSL Finals. Should he be able to crack Toledo’s code and win the world title, Colapinto would be the first surfer from California to do so since Tom Curren in 1990.

Needless to say, the party in San Clemente that night would be one for the books.

As technically perfect a surfer as the Championship Tour has seen in years, Ethan Ewing’s onpoint approach is stylistically as close to perfect as one’s apt to find.

Unfortunately, as of press time, his appearance in his second WSL Finals was questionable after breaking his back while training for the Tahiti Pro in August. It’s not believed to be a career-ending injury, but to be in world title form in time for the Finals is likely a tall order.

Should he not be able to surf in the event, there will be no replacement for his position.

The wild card of the WSL Finals, Joao Chianca “dreamed bigger” all season long, and when the spray settled, he had earned himself a spot in the top five.

This was the hard-charging tube hound’s first full season on the Championship Tour. Picking up a win in Portugal, he shined throughout the year in the heavier conditions.

It’s a relative unknown how he’ll fare at Lowers, but given how much talent he has and how successfully he’s been able to climb to the top of the surf game, anything can happen.

After a breakout season in 2022, Jack Robinson came back strong in 2023. Profoundly focused, as fit as they come, he bookended his season with wins at Pipeline and Teahupoo.

Getting his first taste of the WSL Finals pressure cooker last year, the Aussie is expected to

return to Lowers with an even greater sense of purpose.

Ever since he was a kid, it was clear he could win in heavy, hollow waves, but if he’s going to earn the world title, he’s going to have to do it on the wide-open canvas that is Lowers.

WOMEN

Owner of five world titles, Carissa Moore won the inaugural Rip Curl WSL Finals in 2021 and finished runner-up behind Stephanie Gilmore’s historic performance last year.

With three event wins during the regular season of the Championship Tour, as well as three third-place and three fifth-place finishes, Moore has to be the favorite to win the 2023 world title.

It’s no secret that Lower Trestles is one of her favorite waves in the world. She’s been competing here since she was a kid, and San Clemente feels a lot like a home away from home for her.

With more WSL Finals experience than the rest of the field combined—nobody else in the field was even in last year’s event—don’t think for a second that Moore is going to let the world title slip away from her two years in a row.

The other world champion in the WSL Finals draw, Tyler Wright proved this season that’s she’s as relevant as ever.

Winning the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach, Wright also notched four second-place finishes over the course of the season. Wright surfed in the inaugural WSL Finals in 2021 and will once again have a shot at claiming her third world title.

Growing up in Florida, Caroline Marks relocated to San Clemente, in part, to be closer to Lower Trestles.

Now just a bike ride away from her front door, she’s well acquainted with the break’s many intricacies and moods.

Famous for her powerful backhand attack, the 21-year-old is the only goofy-footer in the Finals field and will enjoy a unique opportunity, as she’ll be able to attack the Lowers rights with a different approach than her regular-footed competitors.

Quintessentially Australian, Molly Picklum has been having a ball on tour this year.

Fun-loving and irreverent, she’s a fan favorite for good reason, but don’t let her affable smile betray how serious of a competitor she is. For a hot minute at the start of the season, she was leading the ratings.

Never missing a finals day all season, she leaned into her knack for manufacturing consistent results. The highlight of Picklum’s season came with a win at the iconic Sunset Beach. She added runner-up results to her tally at Bells Beach and Jeffreys Bay.

5. Caitlin Simmers

Coming straight out of Oceanside, 17-year-old rookie phenom Caitlin Simmers is leading the charge of a new generation of young women from California who are shaking things up.

Winning events in Portugal and Brazil this season, Simmers has most definitely made her presence felt on tour this year—even for as much as she shies away from the spotlight.

Growing up just on the other side of Camp Pendleton, she’s spent a lot of her surfing life at Lowers. Simmers is a creative, innovative surfer, as both the left and right suit her style of surfing perfectly.

It would be a huge underdog story if she could run the table and go from the fifth seed and win the world title, but given what she’s already accomplished this season, anything is possible.

2. Griffin Colapinto

3. Ethan Ewing

4. Joao Chianca

5. Jack Robinson

1. Carissa Moore

2. Tyler Wright

3. Caroline Marks

4. Molly Picklum

Griffin Colapinto Ethan Ewing Joao Chianca Jack Robinson Carissa Moore Tyler Wright Caroline Marks Molly Picklum Caitlin Simmers

Filipe Toledo

Photos: Courtesy of Beatriz Ryder; Aaron Hughes; Matt Dunbar; Brent Bielmann and Thiago Diz/World Surf League

Why the Rip Curl Finals?

How this one-day, winner-take-all event started and where it may be headed in the years to come

By Jake Howard

In one of surfing’s most dramatic sporting moments, in 2019, the world title came down to the final heat of the final event of the season.

Held in all-time conditions at pumping Pipeline in Hawaii, the battle came down to a grudge match between Brazilians Italo Ferreira and Gabriel Medina. The two goofy-footers went toe-to-toe, landing massive haymakers until Ferreira finally emerged victorious.

A ratings boon for the WSL, the moment inspired the power brokers of professional surfing to put their collective heads together to figure out how the world title can be decided on the last day of the season every year.

Historically, world surfing titles had been won based on an accumulation of points from a season’s worth of contest results. And while this put a lot of weight on every event, it wasn’t uncommon for a surfer to mathematically clinch the world title an event or two before the season’s end, making the crowning of the world champ a bit anticlimactic in some instances—especially if the event was held in a distant time zone.

Thus, the WSL Finals was born.

It was billed as a one-day, winner-take-all affair. It would feature the top five men and the top five women in the world competing for surfing’s ultimate prize. To provide the surfers with an equal playing field, it was decided that San Clemente’s Lower Trestles was the optimum location thanks to its high-performance rights and left.

Surf company Rip Curl, which had just relocated its North American operations from Costa Mesa to San Clemente, signed a three-year deal to be the presenting sponsor, and the first-ever Rip Curl WSL Finals was born in 2021.

Working in conjunction with the surf forecasting team at Surfline, it was decided that early September was the optimum time to hold the contest—and what a decision it was.

Thanks to a bombing southwest swell that was borderline too big at times, the inaugural WSL Finals scored some of the best surf Lower Trestles had seen in years. Viewership numbers shattered records, and the event was considered a resounding success as Gabriel Medina and Carissa

Moore topped the podium.

In 2022, the Rip Curl WSL Finals was back, and while the surf wasn’t quite as eye-popping, the competitive drama certainly was top-shelf, as Stephanie Gilmore barnstormed her way from the fifth seed to win her record-setting eighth world title.

Meanwhile, on the men’s side of the draw, San Clemente resident Filipe Toledo was not to be denied his first world title. With a screaming legion of friends and family cheering their hearts out on the beach, Toledo proved unstoppable.

This brings us to 2023 and the final event of the original Rip Curl WSL Finals agreement. The field is stacked with 10 of the best surfers on the planet, and with a little luck, once again the surf will cooperate. After that, it’s anybody’s guess what happens next.

The WSL and Rip Curl have been in lengthy talks about what comes next, but no official announcements have been made at this time. It would be wonderful to see the WSL Finals stay here in San Clemente, but we’ll just have to wait a little while longer to see what comes next.

Until then, there are a couple world champs to crown.

Boardbuilders Hall of Fame Comes to San Clemente

Generations of surfboard craftsmen to be honored in historic Los

Molinos District

By Jake Howard

San Clemente’s Calle De Los Molinos is one of the world’s most fertile grounds when it comes to surfboard building.

Affectionately referred to as the “Surf Ghetto,” this area, built by generations of shaping and glassing talent since the 1950s, is a rough-around-the-edges, tight-knit community. And now, for the first time, that long-standing tradition of building beautiful surfboards is being celebrated with the San Clemente Boardbuilders Hall of Fame at the inaugural Rhythm & Resin Festival.

To get the celebration off the ground, the Hall of Fame will include five craftsmen who have, sadly, already kicked out. That list includes Dale Velzy, Brad Basham, Chris McElroy, Randy Sleigh and Midget Smith.

Another five boardbuilders who are, thankfully, still roaming this planet include Herbie Fletcher, Danny Brawner, Rick James (the shaper,

not the rock star), Jay “Sparky” Longley and Terry Senate.

That’s as strong a list of honorees as one is apt to find in any surf town.

While Velzy’s name looms large, all these boardbuilders have contributed mightily to the Surf Ghetto story over the decades.

From Velzy pioneering the early surf industry, to the epicenter of stoke that is Bashum’s shop, to Brawner glassing for Hobie and laying down beats for Bruce Brown, to the legendary story of James’ missing thumb, this is the stuff of which surfboard legend and lore is made.

The Boardbuilders Hall of Fame inductions will take place on Sept. 9, as part of the new Rhythm & Resin Festival in San Clemente.

Held during the waiting period of the WSL Finals, the induction ceremony will take place in front of Los Molinos Brewery. The festival will also include multiple music stages, street vendors, food trucks, cold beverages and so much more.