The Half Time Report

On the surface travelling the world from one epic surf destination to another seems like a dream you’d never want to wake up from, yet when that travelling is fixated around the World Qualifying Series, at times it can be more of a nightmare.

This is the cutthroat world of sport and this is far from the marketed image that the Dream Tour portrays. Athletes with next to no dollars in their back pocket, worrying about how they’re gonna make it to the next event, and the fact that in such a tight schedule the events are mostly held in waves that you wouldn’t even paddle out in back at your local. There is a lot of misconception amongst the surfing public of how a really good surfer goes about climbing the ranks and try to make it in the world of professional surfing. Sure being a shredder helps, and so does having one of those comp heads, and being fit and all the rest of the typically suggested requirements. But there is so much more to getting a break and climbing that ladder. Unless you’re very fortunate to have secured a wildcard for a major event, starting off for every surfer on the planet means you are bottom-feeding, picking up the scraps, and if you are lucky enough to stock up on enough scraps, you might just get a chance to be invited to the main course, a highly rated event, where you are competing for big points and possibly your only window of opportunity, so you better take it if it appears.

Every year at the Halfway Point of the WQS Tour the rankings are re-seeded, meaning if you just so happen to by then, high enough up the ladder, that means you have finally earnt your chance to have a shot at the back end of the year and either get your seeding up as high as possible for an all-out assault in 2020 or a genuine crack in Hawaii at qualifying for the tour like our King and Queen Ricardo Christie and Paige Hareb did last year. We often hear of these two surfer’s exploits, as they are our showpieces and we’re so proud of them, but these are the background stories of our other representatives out there ‘Flying the Flag’ for us, they share their ins and outs, and the heartache and glory.