Event Guide: Rip Curl WSL Finals

Photo: JPVSPHOTO

San Clemente Times September 9-15, 2021

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San Clemente Times September 9-15, 2021

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THE WORLD TITLE RACE COMES TO TOWN 2021 WORLD CHAMPIONS TO BE DECIDED AT LOWER TRESTLES AT INNOVATIVE NEW RIP CURL WSL FINALS

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or the first time in the history of professional surfing, the 2021 world title will be decided in a single day of action called the Rip Curl WSL Finals—and it’s all going down at Lower Trestles.

Based on their end-of-season rankings, the top five men and women on the World Surf League’s Championship Tour have made the cut and will have a shot at the title.

The No. 1 seeds include four-time world champion and Olympic gold medalist Carissa Moore from Hawaii and two-time world champion Gabriel Medina, who hails from Brazil.

For the women, rounding out this inaugural class will be seven-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore, Brazil’s Tatiana WestonWebb, Australia’s Sally Fitzgibbons and France’s Johanne Defay.

And for the gentlemen, 2019 world champ Italo Ferreira, coming off an Olympic gold medal, will be looking to defend his title (there was no world champion crowned in 2020 due to the pandemic). He’ll be joined by Brazilian countryman and San Clemente resident Filipe Toledo, California’s Conner Coffin and Australian rookie sensation Morgan Cibilic.

The pressure couldn’t be higher nor the stakes greater for this one-day, winner-take-all showdown.

For decades, Lower Trestles has been considered one of the world’s most high-performance waves, and with its perfect left and right A-frame peak, it’s an ideal location for Moore, Medina and the best surfers on the planet to throw down.

Everyone should get ready, because Rip Curl WSL Finals’ new format and a new vision of how surfing’s world champions are crowned will be showcased right here in our backyard on one day in a competitive window spanning from Sept. 9-17.

Home Sweet Home San Clemente-based Rip Curl Eyes Epic Finale For Rip Curl North America president “Rip Curl is a pure surf company,” said Dylan Slater, the stars are aligning over Slater. “We believe in our surfers and San Clemente and Lower Trestles, where believe in crowning a world champion. all eyes in the world of surfing will focus This year is a major evolution (in how a from Sept. 9-17—when the World Surf world champ in surfing is crowned), and League hosts its Rip Curl-sponsored seawe decided to be a part of that vision and son finale and crowns world champs for be a part of that history.” both men and women.

Three male team riders in the finals “Rip Curl in the U.S. started here in San will be rocking Rip Curl wetsuits: Gabriel Clemente—Trestles is even Medina, Conner Coffin and in our original wetsuit logo,” Morgan Cibilic. said Slater, who moved the The new format and coniconic surf brand’s headtest window will allow for Rip quarters and its 70 employCurl to host numerous events ees to San Clemente from during that week, including Costa Mesa in September beach cleanups, autograph 2020. sessions at Rip Curl’s newly “So, it’s fortuitous that upgraded flagship store in (the move to San Clemente) South San Clemente (at 3801 aligned with the fact the South El Camino Real) and a WSL Finals will be here,” live mural painting by local Slater continued. surfer and artist Jeff Lukasik.

Rip Curl North America president This year’s format is Rip Curl will also use the Dylan Slater. Photo: Norb Garrett brand-new, featuring the opportunity to launch its five top-ranked men and women surfing in new E7 Flashbomb Heatseeker wetsuit. a one-day contest to crown a champ. The “It’s the pinnacle wetsuit that combines WSL will pick the one day with the best flexibility with warmth,” Slater said. “We’re wave conditions to hold the new format, utilizing the event and platform to celeensuring that a world champ is crowned at brate multiple parts of our brand.” the finals. (See page 17 for details.)

— Norb Garrett

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Rip Curl WSL Finals

WHO to WATCH

Photo: © WSL / Heff

There will be a total of 10 surfers at the Rip Curl WSL Finals—five men and five women.

But before we get into whom to keep an eye on, it’s going to be important to understand the format of this unique event.

Slated to take place in one day of action during primetime Lowers season, it’s going to go down like this: The No. 1-rated male and female surfers at the end of the 2021 WSL Championship Tour—Gabriel Medina and Carissa Moore, respectively—will both receive a bid directly into what the WSL is calling the Title Match, which will consist of a best-of-three showdown to determine the world champ.

“The Brazilian Storm”—Medina, Italo Ferreira and Filipe Toledo—are the obvious favorites.

Medina has been the surfer to beat all season long. He’s won at Lowers in the past and will be fresh and focused when he hits the water for the Title Match.

That said, Ferreira’s coming off a gold medal performance at the Olympics and will be looking to defend his 2019 title. Plus, local shaper Timmy Patterson, who makes Ferreira’s boards, will know exactly what he should be riding.

Meanwhile, Toledo lives in San Clemente, has won at Lowers and may be the best pure performer in the draw. If he can put all the

All of the other surfers will be seeded into the bracket based on their rankings. At the beginning of the day, which will start with the women, the No. 4 and No. 5 seeds will surf one heat against one another.

The winner of that match will move on to face the No. 3-ranked surfer. From there, the winner advances to face the No. 2-ranked surfer. Whoever is still standing will earn a spot in the Title Match against the top seed, either Moore or Medina. The world title will be decided by the first surfer to win two out of three heats.

So, whom should you keep an eye on?

For the men, the surfers who comprise

pieces together, he’s going to be really dangerous and could go on to win his first world title.

The two outliers are California’s Conner Coffin and Australia’s Morgan Cibilic. Growing up surfing NSSA events at Lowers, Coffin, who’s from Santa Barbara, has a ton of experience here and will be feeling comfortable in what constitutes his home waters.

Rookie Cibilic has been defying expectations all season long and could be a huge spoiler at Lowers. He’s been hanging around town for the last couple of months and has the right at Lowers pretty wired.

For the women, stopping No. 1 seed Moore is going to be a huge challenge. She’s been on another level all year long, and with Olympic gold around her neck, she has all the confidence in the world.

That’s not to say she’s not beatable. In fact, all but one of her losses on the Championship Tour in 2021 came at the hands of Rip Curl WSL Finalists Stephanie Gilmore, Johanne Defay and Tatiana Weston-Webb—and she’s lost twice to Gilmore and Defay, which is a crazy stat considering how dominant the Hawaiian has been this year.

Gilmore, who comes in at the fourth seed, will be looking to claim her record-breaking eighth world title. Fresh off a win in Mexico last month, she’s got the momentum and energy to go the distance.

Between Gilmore and Moore, the two most dominant women in pro surfing over the past decade, they’re sitting on a collective 11 world titles and know what it takes to get to the top.

But for Sally Fitzgibbons, Defay and WestonWebb, the vision of claiming their first title will serve as plenty of fuel for their competitive fire.

The waiting period for the Rip Curl WSL Finals runs from September 9-17. The event will take one day to run, with the surf deciding which day.

How Trestles Became Epicenter of Progressive Surfing in America From Phil Edwards in the ’50s, to the heady Vietnam years, to today’s Rip Curl WSL Finals, Trestles has always held an important place in high-performance surfing BY JAKE HOWARD

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or the better part of 70 years, Trestles—or The Trestle—has loomed large in local surf lore.

Decade after decade, the pristine watershed with its multitude of wave-riding options has served as an epicenter for state-of-the-art, progressive surfing. From the very first surfers to frequent the area to the crowning of the WSL World Champions here in San Clemente this month, Trestles has always been a draw to the best of the best.

“Miki (Dora) and I spent one summer together at San Onofre, and we’d look up at the point and ask these old guys what it was like up there,” recalls Phil Edwards, surfing’s supreme stylist in the 1950s and

San Clemente Times September 9-15, 2021

’60s.

“They’d say, ‘Oh, well, we went back up there in ’38 and Peanuts Larson got this big wave … blah, blah, blah.’ Anyway, Miki was 16, and I was 13. He had a car, so we drove the car up there and walked through the railroad tracks and around the swamp, and that’s how we started surfing The Trestle,” continues Edwards, placing his “discovery” with Dora around 1951 or 1952.

“We didn’t tell anybody, so we had it all to ourselves for a while; it was kind of neat. I graduated high school in ’56, so it would have been before that,” adds Edwards.

Edwards originally hailed from Oceanside, but it was at Trestles and nearby Doheny and Killer Dana where his well-deserved reputation as the epitome of good surf style was born.

“He was the first guy to sleep under the bridge at Doheny,” jokes his wife, Mary.

It didn’t take long for word to get out about the quality of surf on offer at Trestles.

Located at the far southern end of San Clemente at the mouth of the San Mateo Creek, the migratory sandbars and cobblestone points of Uppers, Lowers and Church provided an ideal location for the area’s best surfers to hone their talents, test their equipment and escape the everyday rat race in a truly beautiful Southern California beach setting.

But the utopia couldn’t last forever.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon established the “Western White House” at La Casa Pacifica (originally built in 1926 by one of San Clemente’s founding fathers, Hamilton H. Cotton) on the bluff above the aptly named Cotton’s Point.

With the Vietnam War raging, surfing at Trestles was quickly forbidden for security reasons. There are plenty of stories about

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surfers sneaking out for a few waves anyway and having their boards seized by the military police, but it was Surfer magazine’s founder and publisher, John Severson, who really went toe-to-toe with Nixon.

The feud between the two—one, a proponent of free expression and the counterculture movement; the other, a hard-to-love politician—famously went back to some photos that Severson had snapped of Nixon on the beach and sold to Life magazine.

White House attorney John Ehrlichman eventually invited Severson over to try and broker a peace between the leader of the free world and the leader of the heady surf scene.

“He was one tough cookie,” Severson, who passed away in 2017, wrote in his memoirs. “I tough-cookied him right back.”

“When Nixon was in town, there were armed guards on the beach and a big Coast

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2021 Men’s Final FIVE 1

GABRIEL MEDINA

2

BRAZIL

ITALO FERREIRA

3

BRAZIL

43,400 PTS

FILIPE TOLEDO

4

BRAZIL

31,660 PTS

CONNER COFFIN

5

UNITED STATES

30.735 PTS

MORGAN CIBILIC AUSTRALIA

25,355 PTS

25,270 PTS

2021 WOMen’s Final FIVE 1

Carissa Moore

2

HAWAII

37,770 PTS

Tatiana Weston-Webb BRAZIL

34,715 PTS

3

Sally Fitzgibbons AUSTRALIA

33.000 PTS

4

Stephanie Gilmore* AUSTRALIA

32,035 PTS

5

Johanne Defay FRANCE

32,035 PTS

Photos: © WSL / Heff, © WSL / Diz | *Awarded tiebreaker over Johanne Defay for greater average heat score.

Guard boat outside the break, along with a flock of helicopters cruising above,” recalled former U.S. Surfing Champ Corky Carroll in a 2016 story in the Orange County Register.

Carroll was one of the few surfers given permission to access the area after he wrote a letter to the Secret Service explaining that he needed to surf Trestles to continue training.

“I would check in on the beach and paddle out to perfect big summer south swells either all alone or with Rolf Aurness. Rolf’s dad was the actor James Arness (dropped the “u” for television) and he had a home there, so they could also surf,” continued Carroll.

By 1972, the Trestles area was reopened for surfing. Ultimately, Nixon proved not to be the complete evil villain he was portrayed as. After original talks to create a California State Park fell apart around 1970, the plan was shifted south to San Onofre.

Thanks in part to Nixon’s appreciation for this pristine bit of coastal wilderness, on Aug. 31, 1971, a 50-year lease was signed by the state and the U.S. Marines, who control the land as part of Camp Pendleton.

That lease was set to expire this year, but it was extended for three years while the State

San Clemente Times September 9-15, 2021

of California, the Marines and local interest groups figure out what’s next.

In terms of surfing, Trestles enjoyed a golden era in the ’70s and ’80s, when crowds were still relatively light and just getting down to the beach was more of a mission than it is today (yeah, I’m looking at you, e-bike riders).

By the second half of the ’80s, the surf industry was booming, and Trestles became one of the de facto hubs for area pros and photographers. With surf companies and magazines based in San Clemente, Uppers and Lowers offered the perfect spot to, once again, hone talent, test equipment and help the sport progress to the next level.

In 1989, Christian Fletcher, a young San Clemente radical who was pioneering aerial surfing, won the Body Glove Surfbout at Lowers. Banking $30,000 for the effort, it was the first shot across that bow that wave-riding was about to take another huge leap forward.

Then, in 1990, a young, fresh-faced kid from Florida named Kelly Slater made his professional debut at Lowers. He famously signed what then was the biggest contract in pro surfing history on the beach, and then went on to win the Body Glove Surfbout.

Thanks to Fletcher in ’89 and Slater in ’90, Lowers’ reputation as the hotbed for progressive surfing in the United States was cemented. By the early 2000s, it was a stop on the WSL Championship Tour, drawing the best surfers from around the world every year.

In 2004, the contest, then called the Boost Mobile Pro, enjoyed all-time, classic Lowers conditions. It started off with 3- to 5-foot surf before a swell dubbed the “Monster Down Under” served up sets that topped out in the 10-foot range.

Eventually won by Australian Joel Parkinson, who beat 11-time world champ Slater in the final, it was one for the history books.

“It is one of my favorite places in the world,” says Slater, who got Parkinson back in 2012 as he notched his 50th career world tour victory and third win in a row at Lowers.

And now, the Rip Curl WSL Finals will crown the 2021 world champions at Lower Trestles, where the top five men and women on the leaderboard will be featured.

At this point, the smart money to win the title is on what’s been dubbed “The Brazilian Storm.” Anchored by world champs Gabriel Medina and Italo Ferreira, as well as San

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Clemente transplant Filipe Toledo, the crew represent the leaders of a high-flying, hard-charging generation of surfers from Brazil who are pushing the sport yet further forward.

“I love this wave; it’s a large part of why I moved my family to San Clemente,” says Toledo. “There’s so many possibilities at Lowers.”

In the mid-2000s, Surfrider Foundation released a study breaking down the economic impact that the Trestles area has had on surfing and the local community.

The findings were revealing. In 2008, it reported that there were more than 330,000 “surf visits” to Trestles during the year, which contributed $10 million to the local economy.

More than a dozen years later, those numbers have surely grown, as surfing is coming off its Olympic debut and is more popular than ever.

Whether you’re a top-flight pro or regular old local getting your daily fill of waves, there really is something for everyone down at Trestles—and, oh, the stories we could tell.

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A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF PRO SURFING AT LOWERS There’s a lot more to winning at Lowers than just surfing well

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t’s the morning of the final,” Kelly Slater famously uttered en route to his 1990 professional debut at Lower Trestles.

The moment was captured in a Quiksilver video called Black and White, and it basically served as the launchpad for the Florida surfer’s now-storied career. It was, after all, on the beach at Lowers where he signed what then was the biggest contract in pro surfing history and then went on to win the contest.

What you don’t hear nearly as much about—but definitely should because it ties directly into state-of-the-art surfing today—is that in the previous year, local boy Christian Fletcher beat the establishment at Lowers, courtesy of his brash, unapologetic approach to both abovethe-lip and power maneuvers.

The godfather of aerial surfing, the unseeded Fletcher won a cool $30,000 for the effort, beating North Hollywood’s Joey Jenkins, Cardiff’s Colin Smith and San Clemente’s Noah Budroe in the final.

Local icon Dino Andino, father of Kolohe

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Andino (who just represented the United States in surfing’s Olympic debut in Tokyo), finished the event in fifth.

Thanks to Fletcher in ’89 and Slater in ’90, today, a top-level pro contest at Lowers is career-defining.

Over the decades, we’ve seen world champions such at Carissa Moore, Mick Fanning and Andy Irons all post huge victories here. Moore calls it one of her favorite waves in the world. She’ll be setting her sights on winning a fifth world title at Lowers this month.

The last WSL Championship Tour event to come to the cobblestone point was back in 2017, when it was a Brazilian sweep, as Filipe Toledo and Silva Lima topped the podium.

And now, 30 years after Slater exploded onto the scene at Lowers, it’s back.

Perhaps the biggest competitive moment Lowers has ever seen is about to unfold. The Rip Curl WSL Finals will crown the 2021 men’s and women’s world champions, and it is fair to say that never before has San Clemente enjoyed a victory celebration like what’s about to go down— and that’s saying a lot!

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