The World Surf League tour is about to start again! Each year the best surfers in the world compete for the world title by surfing famous surf spots all over the world. In total there are 11 events for men, and 10 events for women. The man and woman who collects most points during these events become the world champions! There are 34 surfers in the men’s division and 17 in the women’s division. In order to qualify for the World Surf League a surfer first must compete in the World Qualifying Series, a separate series of events. In the QS, the higher the surfers end in the rankings of each event the more points they earn. The surfers with the most points get to join the World Surf League tour, so they can compete for the world title! This is a very exciting year for us, because this year for the first time the QS also has an Asian leg, with several stops in Indonesia! Sumatran surfer Yasnyiar Bonne Gea will be competing on the QS this year, and we are very happy to announce that we are sponsoring and supporting her! Each year the 22 highest ranked surfers of the WSL get to stay on the tour the next year, and they are joined by the ten highest ranked surfers from the QS. We hope that next year Yasnyiar will be able to join the WSL tour!
The surfers on the World Surf League tour compete in events around the world. Each event consists out of several rounds, in which two to four surfers compete in ‘heats’. In each heat, which can be seen as a ‘surfbattle’, the surfers have between 20 to 30 minutes to score the best waves possible. The heats are not about catching the most waves, as only the two best waves count. The waves are scored on a ten-point scale. The surfers with the best score move on to the next round, until the final where the winner is determined. The ranking you obtain in the event determines how many points you will earn in the event, and the surfer who’s earned the most points over the total 11 (or 10 in the women’s case) events takes the world title. This means that it can happen that the world champion is already known before the last event has been surfed, because nobody can earn that many points anymore! In fact, this happened last year when John John Florence became the male champion in Portugal. After that there were two more events to be surfed! The female champion, Tyler Wright, also was revealed before the last event of the tour. She won in France, even though there was one more event on the tour.
Like every year, this year the tour starts in Australia. On March 14-25th the Quiksilver and Roxy pro are held. After this there are two more stops in Australia, from where the tour moves on to Brazil. After Brazil comes Fiji, then South Africa and next onTahiti. After Tahiti the tour moves to the US, then to France and Portugal and each year it ends in the well-known Pipeline break in Hawaii. Imagine the life of a professional surfer, traveling the world to surf the most famous breaks! Let us know in the comments which one of these countries you would like to go for a surf trip!
*Head image: zigzagsurfmagazine.com