The United States is guaranteed to add at least one woman to the Championship Tour in 2025. So far, no American man has qualified (yet) via the 2024 Challenger Series. Matt Myers is hoping to change that.
The fickle and at times critical Ribeira D’Ilhas in Ericeira, Portugal, was the second to last CS event of the season. It represents a tightening of gears as the rankings are congested with CT hopefuls in the penultimate event.
While it looks like a straightforward point on screen, Ribeira is harder than it appears. There were solid overhead days but it’s unpredictable. Matt said most of the heats were held in tricky conditions (read: weird waves) thanks to 10-foot high tides, backwash, wonk, flat spots and pounding shorebreak. Just another week on the grind.
But this CS grind is almost over. The Brazilian beachbreak of Saquarema is the sixth and final event of the year, and after the final horns, the top 10 men and the top five women will join the big leagues in 2025.
It wasn’t the best result for Matt’s American trio of Nolan Rapoza (15th), Levi 34th, Alyssa Spencer (9th) and the lone 19-year-old Canadian soldier Sanoa Dempfle-Olin (17th). When the fields are this stacked with talent, sometimes talent only takes you so far. It’s a charcuterie of gamesmanship, ocean awareness and plain ol’ luck. Take Sanoa’s wave in the Round of 32. She scratched into what would have been her highest-scoring wave of the heat, and it would have been a winning wave had her hands not left the rail a fraction of a second after the heat ended.
The surfing in the above clip from Brady Lawrence is still solid and worth a watch. The choice of using LCD Soundsystem’s “Dance Yourself Clean” has long been in my Rolodex of songs that deserve to be in a surf edit, so props to Brady for pulling that one out.
Currently, Nolan (15th) and Alyssa (8th) are the prized ponies with the best shot to jump up into the qualification threshold. The Corona Saquarema Pro runs from October 12-20. We’ll find out if they can soon enough.
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