In the past 24 years, there has only been a single surfer who wasn’t either from Australia or called Carissa Moore who has won the women’s world title. That surfer was Peru’s Sofia Mulanovich, and her 2004 championship is surrounded by seven won by both Layne Beachley and Steph Gilmore, four victories to Carissa Moore, and a couple to Tyler Wright. But while Moore and a number of Australian competitors head the list of threats to take out the 2021 world title, there are a number of Americans and a Brazilian who are looking to upset the apple cart in what is a wide-open world title race.
Perhaps chief among those is Lakey Peterson, the 26-year-old from Santa Barbara still on the hunt for an inaugural world crown. Since emerging on the scene back in 2012, Peterson has been incredibly consistent, finishing either sixth or seventh in six of the seven seasons she’s been on tour. She’s struggled to take the next step up the world rankings, but the new format this year could be a major advantage for her. With the top five surfers after nine events getting an invite to a winner-takes-all event at Trestles, Peterson only needs to find a handful of extra points to find her way there. And if she can do that, a maiden world title is well and truly on the cards.
Another American looking to upset the status quo is one of the youngest surfers on tour – and probably the most exciting. Caroline Marks has only just turned 19, but already she has shown that she has a huge career ahead of her, and it would surprise no one to see her win the first of what could be many world titles this year. The powerful goofy-footer has only had two years on tour; in the first, in 2018, she finished seventh. The next year she won her first event at the Gold Coast Pro, won again in Portugal, and finished the year in second place. Marks seems almost certainly destined for a brilliant career, and she is more than capable of kick-starting it all in 2021.
Those two lead the list of challengers to the dominance Australians and Carissa Moore have had over the tour for so long, but it would be remiss to ignore Brazilian Tatiana Weston-Webb as a chance. Weston-Webb is not unlike Lakey Peterson in that the new format could easily reward her consistency this year. Another goofy-footer, Peterson has an incredibly powerful backhand and what she’s good at, she’s really good at. Despite that, she’s never finished higher than fourth in the world rankings – but also never lower than tenth. She’s rarely knocked out of events early, having made the quarter-finals in 14 of her last 21 tournaments – but none of those she’s won. If she can sneak her way into the top 5 and get a gig at Trestles, this could easily be her year.
Unfortunately for the three aforementioned surfers, however, it’s unlikely they’ll all be able to squeeze into the top 5, because there’s a pretty handy trio of surfers who will probably be standing in their way. All three of Wright, Moore and Gilmore appear set for big seasons, and it would be a huge surprise if they are not all – or at least a couple of them – surfing for another world title at Trestles come September.
Wright missed the majority of the 2019 season and much of 2018, but prior to that she was virtually a certainty to be there or thereabouts at the business end of each season. Between 2011 and 2017 she finished in the top five every season, and won her two world crowns in the last two of those seasons. When fit she’s close to unstoppable, and she showed that she’s well and truly ready to return to her best when she won the first-ever women’s event at Pipeline back in December. it’s incredible to think that she’s still only 26 years of age, and her best could still be yet to come – a truly ominous thought for her competitors.
The competitor she beat at that Pipe event was Carissa Moore, the reigning world champion and a four-time tour winner. Hailing from Honolulu, Moore has been one of the greatest surfers of the modern era, winning a massive 23 events since back in 2009. She has very little in the way of weaknesses, enabling her to excel on virtually every event on tour, and she is so consistent that barring an injury it’s extremely difficult to see her missing out on a spot at Trestles.
Rounding out this extremely talented trio is perhaps the best of them all; seven-time world champ Steph Gilmore. Those seven world titles put her in a tie with Layne Beachley for the most ever on the women’s tour, and behind only a guy called Kelly Slater in surfing history. Her style is immaculate, one of the best on tour, with her instantly recognisable tall, slender frame surfing with as much grace as virtually anyone in history. At 33 years of age you’d be forgiven for thinking she might be sliding towards the end of her career, but having won in 2018 and finished fourth in 2019, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Those six competitors appear to be the most well-positioned to challenge for the world title this season and will most likely take up the majority, if not all, of the five spots available at Trestles. The race for that season-ending event, however, is wide open, and there are plenty of competitors who would justifiably feel slighted at not being considered among the top hopes.
Sally Fitzgibbons would be one of those; the 30-year-old has been desperately close to a world title on a number of occasions, finishing second at the end of three seasons and third at the end of another four. In fact, only once since 2009 has she finished outside the top 5, meaning a place at Trestles is very much a possibility. Courtney Conlogue is in a similar boat; she’s never won a world title, but has finished top five in five of the past eight years – and top three every year between 2015 and 2018.
Somehow, it feels as though there are more than five perennial top-five finishers on the women’s tour. Surfers like Moore, Wright, Gilmore and Marks seem like the best chances in 2021, but right behind them is a host of competitors who have consistently finished in or around the top five for a number of years. More so than on the men’s side, it appears likely that there will be a bottleneck around the positions which will be rewarded with an invite to the season-ending event, meaning we should be in for a thrilling season.
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