This Week in Women's Surf: January 23, 2024
Carissa Says Goodbye to the CT, Steph Announces a Year Off, Lisa Andersen Officially Departs Roxy, Luana Silva Returns to the Tour, 10-year-old Mikela Castro Makes a Stand for the Future and more!
Carissa Announces Departure From the CT, Steph Takes a Year Off
We’ve known for a while that the time was coming for a generational shift on the WSL’s Championship Tour, but are unsure anyone could have predicted a 2024 season that didn’t feature the combined 13 World Titles that Carissa Moore and Stephanie Gilmore represent. It’s impossible to overstate the effect their joint dominance of the past 17 years has had on the landscape of surfing.
Steph’s statement made clear that her competitive fire is still well and truly burning and she’ll be back for the 2025 season. Notably her fellow GOAT, Kelly Slater, took off much of the 1999-2002 seasons after having won 6 World Titles, returning in 2003 to win a further 5, and is still on tour at the age of 51. When Steph next competes on the CT she’ll only be 37 - more World Titles aren’t out of the question.
Carissa’s departure is more definitive. She’ll keep her position on tour to surf Pipe, the first event of the season, return to Tahiti with a wildcard, plus head back to the Olympics to defend her gold medal. Beyond that however, her competitive career on the Championship Tour will be over.
There’s a lot to digest and we plan to have a podcast episode in your ears very soon to cover the announcements in more depth. For now, we’ll just state that Carissa’s presence will be hugely missed. Her massive smile, her open and honest vulnerability, her endless ability to adapt to any condition, and of course her unrivaled power will be remembered for generations to come. Thankfully we’ll no doubt still see plenty of each in her post-CT career.
Luana Silva Joins 2024 CT, Sophie McCulloch Takes Replacement Spot
The announcements from Carissa and Steph expectedly shook up the 2024 CT roster. As Steph’s decision is pre-season and includes being absent for the full season, each person below her in the rankings have moved up one position, meaning that Sally Fitzgibbons moves into qualification via the 2023 CT and will have a higher seed in 2024 than her Challenger Series qualification had allotted her. It also means that Luana Silva officially requalifies for the CT based on her Challenger Series ranking.
Luana had already been granted the WSL Replacement spot for the 2024 season but no longer needed it, opening the door for another surfer to fill Carissa’s absence post-Pipe. The WSL have decided to gift that spot to Sophie McCulloch.
You’ll remember that at the end of the 2022 Challenger Series season Sophie had a dream run at Haleiwa, winning the event and qualifying for the CT when no one, including herself, was considering it to be a possibility. The dream quickly turned to a nightmare when Soph broke her foot and had to skip the first two events of the season, leaving it nearly impossible to make it past the mid-season cut, but she gave it a red hot crack, making the Quarterfinals in her first CT in Portgual while still injured.
It could still be a hard run for Soph, as it seems unlikely she’ll get a start at Pipe, but with one more event than she was able to attend in 2023 she’ll no doubt make the most of it.
It will also be interesting to see who receives wildcards if anyone is injured post-Pipe…
Lisa Andersen’s Iconic Relationship with Roxy is Over
Though Lisa Andersen technically didn’t found Roxy, you could be forgiven for thinking so. Her request to her sponsor Quiksilver for women’s boardshorts to surf in, rather than just bikini bottoms, kickstarted the brand and she was instrumental in many of their product lines from the beginning - product lines that saw profit for the business grow from $20m to $650m during her defining era. Now, after 30 years of the two names being synonymous, they have parted ways.
Lisa’s announcement was as quintessentially Lisa as Kelia’s was Kelia. Two very different messages emblematic of two towering forces in surfing now facing a new chapter in life. Much like the futures of Carissa and Steph, we’re excited to see what comes next, but still in shock that this is happening.
10-Year-Old Mikela Castro Makes a Stand in Costa Rica
Picking up the baton from Lucy Small, 10-year-old Mikela Castro used the opportunity of an open mic after a win in the U/18 division at a local event in her home of Jacó Beach in Costa Rica to inform the organisers that she thought her efforts were worth as much as those of the men’s divisions.
According to DUKE Surf the men earned $250 prize money, while the women received products.
You can watch the video above, which was posted by a national media outlet in Costa Rica, but it is in Spanish, so here is Google’s translation of what she had to say:
“I feel very sad because I feel that it was unfair that we girls expressed ourselves the same as the men in junior and under 14 and they were awarded better and this is a women's league and I think they should be more aware of girls.”
It’s well worth using the translation on Instagram to read the exchange on the above post between the event’s organiser, Mario Fernandez, and Mikela’s father Mike. DUKE also quotes from the back-and-forth in the article linked above, but non-Spanish speakers will need Google Translate for that one too.
Big Wave Action Heats Up
The Big Wave season is in full swing, with opening ceremonies for Red Bull Magnitude and the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational taking place a few weeks ago, and the Tudor Nazaré Big Wave Challenge happening days ago in Portugal around the same time as the first day of Red Bull Magnitude hit the water in Hawaii.
Maya Gabeira was able to defend her title at Nazaré, winning Women’s Best Performance for the second time. This year’s contest featured only Maya and Michelle des Bouillons competing for the title, as fellow contestant Justine Dupont was in the process of giving birth to her son Elio at around the same point in time (congratulations Justine!)
Time to get Carissa on the podcast 😊❤️🔥