The introduction of the mid-season cut has been met with varied responses from fans. The most notable potential advantage was the element of added intrigue that it brings in the early stages of the season, and there’s no doubt that it achieved that, particularly at the Margaret River Pro when a huge number athletes had a spot in the second half of the tour to surf for. The downside, however, was always going to be the potential for big names to miss the second half of the season, with only the top ten women and top 22 men advancing. And while there weren’t as many of these casualties as there could have been, there were still a number of big names who failed to finish above the cut line. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Sally Fitzgibbons
Fitzgibbons would have been one of the first surfers picked to make it through the mid-season cut by most experts at the beginning of the year, but alas, an uncharacteristic beginning to the year has seen her sent packing. The 31-year-old Aussie has been arguably the most consistent surfer on tour over the course of more than a decade; since joining the tour in 2010, she hasn’t finished lower than eighth and has finished in the top five nine times in the past 11 years. Finishing in the top ten has never been an issue for her, so she can count herself unlucky that it became one in the first year of the mid-season cut. Fitzgibbons only made it past the Round of 16 once in five events this season, meaning that after five events, she was sitting in 15th place and fairly comfortably below the cut line.
Conner Coffin
Coffin was probably the most surprising male casualty of the mid-season cut. The super consistent Californian has finished in the top 22 every year since he first joined the league in 2016, and last year earned a spot at the first ever WSL Finals at Trestles courtesy of a fourth place finish. At the age of 28, he would have entered 2022 with high aspirations, but it all went wrong from the outset. Supertubos was the only event at which he made it past the Round of 32, and after five rounds he found himself in a tie for 23rd, exactly one spot below where he needed to be to make the cut.
Owen Wright
A veteran of the tour, Wright has been a regular in the top ten of the world rankings for over a decade. Between 2017 and 2019 he finished sixth twice and ninth once, and though he struggled last year, the 32-year-old would have expected to be relatively comfortably in the top 22 halfway through the season. Instead, he got off to a shocker of a start to the year, leaving himself too much work to do to scrape his way back above the cut line. In the first three events he was twice eliminated in the Round of 32 and once in the Elimination Round, and though he performed better at the Rip Curl Pro at Bells, he couldn’t do enough at the Margaret River Pro to get any higher than a tie for 23rd.
Morgan Cibilic
Cibilic might not have spent as much time near the top of the world rankings as the above three names, but in the short period of time in which he’s been on the tour he’s already made a major mark. The Novocastrian burst onto the tour last year, making three quarterfinals in his first five events and ultimately making it through to the WSL Finals with a fifth place finish. Unfortunately, he came down with a case of the second-year blues in 2022, struggling to make an impact at any event. He endured a similar start to Wright before, like his more experienced counterpart, performing a little better at Bells, but it was too little too late, and he’ll have to wait another year to have another crack at the top level.
Leonardo Fiorivanti
Fiorivanti’s talent has been apparent since he entered the tour as an 18-year-old back in 2016, and last season was the first in which he really began to make a mark against the best in the world. He finished 13th, notably making a quarterfinal at Pipe and then ending the year with a wave of momentum behind him courtesy of an equal career best third at the final event of the season in Mexico. Logic dictated that, at 24, his improvement would continue this year, but sport isn’t always logical and instead he went in the other direction. The Italian started with a Round of 16 finish at Pipeline, but thereafter wouldn’t make it through the Round of 32 for the next four events and gradually fell down the world rankings as a result, finding himself in 27th after five contests.
The Wildcards
There were two other surfers whose absence at the top of the leaderboard is a major surprise, though given that they’ve only paddled out for one event between the two of them, it hasn’t been form which has kept them out of contention. Caroline Marks was among the favourites for this year’s world title while Gabriel Medina was the favourite, but due to injury and personal issues respectively they find themselves well below the cut line at the halfway point of the season. Enter the WSL. Clearly, they want the best surfers in the world surfing, so both Marks and Medina have been awarded second-half of the year wildcard entries, meaning they can both compete for the rest of the year – even if realistically they have very minimal chance of making it through to the WSL Finals.
The mid-season cut has certainly thrown a spanner into the Championship Tour works, adding an added element of intrigue to the early parts of the season. An unfortunate by-product has been the elimination of a handful of quality surfers, Sally Fitzgibbons the most notable among them. Love it or hate it, however, the mid-season cut has shaken up the tour schedule, and with the WSL calling it ‘a cornerstone of the new framework’, it appears to be here to stay.
