The two-time world champ wins the Swatch event, leads tour. And there's a reason…
A few minutes ago, Carissa Moore won the Swatch contest at Trestles, easily beating the South African Bianca Buitentag. She leads the gals going into Portugal, a contest that starts in four days.
(Watch the final here)
What’s the secret to her dazzling success? Fitness? Boards? How about a flawless, almost-men’s WSL level technique.
Technique matters. It’s the difference between being a game changer and a numbers maker. Between top three or better in the world and shuffling orbits on the qualifying series.
It’s the difference of an eighth of an inch in foot placement, the ability to be able to shift around your board in response to curves in the wave, to the subtlety of the rocker in your board and the shape of the rail line.
And Carissa Moore? The two-timer from Honolulu? She’s got her technique dialled better than anyone on tour. Stephane Gilmore is close, but with style in her mind, she’ll ride a little forward if necessary to find the aesthetic she’s chasing.
Carissa, like Kelly Slater, finds her own style in the perfection of her technique. That only in the purity of her function will form follow.
Watch her in motion, here, in her semi-final against Dimity Stoyle.
I want you to watch how she opens her shoulders on those top turns (spray!), how a familiarity with the boards of her shaper Matt Biolos allows her to surf as if the board was an extension of her feet (note how she’ll delay her bottom turn to allow the wave to hit the bank a little harder, to curve, so she can attack… exactly… in the pocket).
Shane Beschen, the former sparring partner of Kelly Slater (same age, once scored three 10s on three waves in a World Tour heat, still the highest-scoring heat in history) knows it. He’s been working on Carissa’s air game (trampolines, video sessions at Trestles) and he’s seen her refine her technique to such a point, she can hammer a move that’ll give her a heat, at will. All she needs in the waves.
“There was a moment at the US Open at Huntington Beach,” says Shane. “And she was in the semis and losing to Sally Fitzgibbons. The waves were really bad and it was high tide and it had stopped breaking on the outside. It came down to one wave. Carissa caught it, there was nothing to hit on the outside and she barely had enough momentum to get to the shore. But, when she got there, she did this huge throw-tail. A proper throw-tail. She threw half the board out of the water and stomped it clean. You see very few things like that in women’s surfing. The crowd went wild. I was super psyched but I didn’t know how the judges were going to react. No moves on the outside? But she scored a nine.”
Technique? Yeah, it matters.
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I’d argue Steph’s better, but I don’t really care that much. There are only 5 or 6 girls worth even watching – Carissa, Steph, that big girl from Costa Mesa, that big girl from Lennox Head, and one or two of the blond ones.
Though my heart belongs to Steph, Carissa is RAD.
Absolutely correct. THE best style on the women’s tour without a doubt. That’s always been the case. She only loses heats because of wave selection/bad luck just as anyone does. But if all things were equal–everyone got the same wave for purposes of comparison, she’d win every time.