The 2023 World Surf League is almost upon us, with the Championship Tour set to begin with the Billabong Pro Pipeline on the 29th of January. The women’s side of the tour will likely see the usual suspects competing at the pointy end of the season, but there isn’t a great deal separating them. With the countdown to the season well and truly underway, let’s take a look at some of the favourites to win the 2023 Women’s Championship Tour.
Carissa Moore
Moore’s presence at the top of the list won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has watched professional surfing at all over the past decade. The five-time world champion has been a dominant force on the Championship Tour over the past few years in particular, and if it weren’t for a rampaging Steph Gilmore she likely would have added a sixth piece of silverware to her ever-growing trophy cabinet last season. As consistent as she is talented, Moore rarely fails to make it to the final handful of surfers in a tournament, regardless of the wave, and this ability to surf to a high level in all manner of conditions means it’s hard to see her finishing outside the top couple in the world rankings. From there, it will all be about whether she can get the job done at Trestles.
Stephanie Gilmore
Generational athletes like Steph Gilmore aren’t successful by accident, and last year she reminded the surfing world of exactly that. Heading into last year as a seven-time world champ, Gilmore appeared past her best and likely sliding towards retirement; she’d won just one of her world titles since 2014 and the last had been in 2018. And throughout the 2022 season, she was hardly at the peak of her powers. A win at El Salvador proved pivotal as she scraped into the WSL Finals at Trestles in fifth spot, but even so she appeared unlikely to be able to challenge from there; the format of the Finals dictates that she’d need to beat each of the four surfers who finished ahead of her in succession in the one day. But at the age of 34, she turned back the clock to deliver her best day of surfing in years and maybe of her career, knocking off her competitors one by one and ultimately recording one of the most memorable world titles in surfing history, becoming the most successful female surfer ever in the process. This year, at age 35, it’s hard to predict how she’ll go. The fact remains that she was a fair way behind the pack for much of last year, but she also demonstrated that at her best she’s still close to unstoppable, and her competitive drive and ability to perform when it matters most clearly remains.
Tatiana Weston-Webb
After an agonising defeat at the hands of Moore in the 2021 WSL Finals, Weston-Webb’s quest for an inaugural world title didn’t begin particularly well last year. She did just enough to scrape past the mid-season cut, but once she did she flicked a switch, coming home with a wet sail to finish the season in third. Unfortunately, she was a victim of Gilmore’s rampage at Trestles, resigning her to yet another close-but-not-quite season. Already, she’s very hard to beat at her best, but as last year showed the consistency is not quite there – it is, however, easy to forget that the goofy footer is just 26 years old. There is plenty of scope for her to improve this year, and if she does she will be a major threat for the world title.
Tyler Wright
It’s been a rough few years for Tyler Wright from a surfing perspective, but it would be no surprise if 2023 is the year it all turns around. In fact, it seemed like the two-time world champ had done that last year, finding herself in a battle at the top of the world rankings halfway through the season, but a Covid infection kickstarted a run of missed events which saw her ultimately fall outside the top five. When she was fit and firing, she was clearly a top five surfer in the world; in fact alongside Carissa Moore, she was probably the best. If she gets a clear run this year, she is as good a chance of anyone of winning the whole thing.
Caroline Marks
Caroline Marks is walking proof that improvement is not linear. After bursting onto the scene with a seventh place finish in 2018 at the age of just 16, she very nearly went all the way the next year when she finished second to Carissa Moore. Since then, however, things haven’t gone her way. 2020 was, of course, a Covid write-off, while in 2021 she struggled for consistency and dropped back to sixth in the world. Then last year, she missed the whole first half of the season, before showing reasonable but unspectacular form in the second half of the year to finish 11th. Marks will turn just 21 this year, and despite an inauspicious last couple of years still remains perhaps the best young talent in surfing. Consistency, as mentioned, has been an issue, but talent certainly is not, and if she manages to have an uninterrupted season it’s hard to see her failing to make it to Trestles, where no one will want to face her.
Lakey Peterson
Lakey Peterson is another who is still hunting for a maiden world title, but where that feels somewhat inevitable for Weston-Webb, for Peterson it doesn’t feel like quite as much of a certainty. Though the American has racked up a couple of top three season finishes in her career, she’s regularly found herself a tier below the best of the best, and that was no different last year when she finished sixth and just missed out on the WSL Finals. She did, however, make a couple of event finals and a semi. Peterson regularly puts herself there or thereabouts, though she does lack the high-scoring ability of some of the names above her on this list. Still, if she consistently puts herself in positions to win, as she’s capable of doing, she’ll find her way to Trestles, and from there anything can happen.
Johanne Defay
For a long time Johanne Defay seemed destined for a good but not great career, finishing between fourth and ninth seven consecutive seasons prior to last year. In 2022, however, aged 28, she took a big step forward. The first half of her year was consistent with the rest of her career; she made the quarterfinals in all five events, but failed to advance to the semis even once. Thereafter, however, she exploded into form, making three semis, two finals, and winning one event to finish the year the second ranked surfer in the world. Her world title hopes were squashed by Gilmore at Trestles, but nonetheless the year showed that she is not just making up the numbers. If she can carry the form she displayed in the back half of 2022 into this season, she’ll be making another appearance in the WSL Finals.
There are a handful of other names who are capable of improving drastically this year, with a couple of talented youngsters having sporadically put in big performances in 2023. The above seven, however, are the standouts. Each of them has a chance of winning the world title and it’s hard to see the world champion coming from outside of that group, but the top four in particular will be tough to beat. Moore deserves to be the favourite as the best in the world, a title she’s earned over many years, but she will be made to work for it, with her biggest threats likely to be Wright, Weston-Webb and Gilmore. The season is shaping up as an enthralling one, and in just a few days, it will all kick off in what we hope will be pumping conditions at perhaps the most iconic break in the world.
