The WSL Raglan Pro Wrap

Italo Ferreira - The champ and the crowd pleaser

It’s taken me a few days to settle after the last couple of weeks stalking the world’s best surfers in Raglan. It was a crazy fortnight. From the outset I made a simple brief; get the free surfing. Getting a photog gig with the WSL was discounted, assuming they would bring their normal team. Turns out they did contract Rambo and Oscar Heatherington. Not gonna lie, I was a bit gutted to find that out. But I reminded myself I didn’t want to do that. As it turned out my old mate Andrew Cornaga from Photosport NZ contracted me to shoot key days. It worked out sick. We ended up with multiple pages in the NZ Herald, Herald socials and RNZ. AND I wasn’t under the pump in anyway half to what Rambo and Oscar were. Those lads worked hard!

Italo’s free surfing airs proved to be the forerunner of who was gonna win

Sooooo what was good and what was shite? The over arching sentiment is; it was fucking amazing. Even on the lay days, Ruapuke was pumping. The weather was insanely good; the WSL surfers and their entourage’s probably have an overly rosy perception of Waikato May weather. The bus system worked really well. It was easy park up at the airfield and jump on a bus. I’m pretty sure Manu Bay reached spectator capacity 4 days.

Rad!

The Colapinto heat… The WSL had a shocker. Behind the scenes there was definitely pressure to run heats fast. Bottom line; if you get the event done in consecutive days you save money. But to press go also costs a lot of money. I believe every time the buses were activated it was over 60K per day. The intel I have is that the WSL were told that Monday 18 was going to be super marginal, but they put the brothers out, Griffin won over Crosby and then the event went on hold for 5 days. They had time, money was wasted, Crosby got the rough end of the stick for sure.

Firing, pumping, dreamy Manu and not a sausage out

Lead WSL photographer Ed Sloane got bitten by a shark. It’s heavy. At 8.40 am during the Dora/Ferreira semi the skis plucked him and the competitors out of the line up. Chaos, confusion, speculation. St John was onsite and treated Ed fast, he was wisked in to Waikato Hospital. Ed’s injuries are bad, nearly all his tendons in his right ankle were severed. Eventually the WSL announced that there had been a “wildlife” incident and went on hold for 4+ hours. Ok, so this is the first ‘wildlife’ incident in a WSL event since [ironically] J-bay and Mick Fanning. But Mick Fanning didn’t get injured. So Raglan now has the dubious honour of being a bit bitey.

I get that protocols are in place, and dude, Ed got bitten! But during that loooong 5 hour wait, Manu Bay was fricken pumping. The Ledge fired up, there were double spitting barrels. The skis had buzzed the water repeatedly. When the contest resumed, the swell was starting to get a bit sleepy.

Yago Dora on the Sunday evening and his 10 pointer

Sawyer Linblad gave Carissa a bloody good run for her money

So good to see Morgan Cibilic in the final bracket

I like that Tama is in the background framing Carrissa

Italo attacked Manu Bay like it was a wave pool. As mentioned before, his approach to the wave from the outset had him as a dead-cert, safe bet.

That said, the finals were great…. 5 hours laaaaater. [use your Sponge Bob voice] The crowd went fucking wild. The media mosh pit was intense, I defo loved that. There were bodies tripping over, fellow photogs getting hauled up.. backs had. So good!

Will the WSL came back to Raglan? It should, the maxed out capacity, the waves were pumping. It’s a cost effective tap on to the Aussie leg. Certainly all the sound bites from all the top surfers, albeit somewhat rehearsed scripts, about how beautiful NZ is. [NZ Tourism DID pay for them to be here] The images, clips and media was really good. BUT someone got bit. And South Africa are rueing their decision to withdraw their funding.

My hope is that the Raglan Pro becomes a fixture on the World Tour. And it's a clique why. The finals and presso were done. I’d finished my edit and upload to Photosport and was walking through a somewhat deserted site. Raglan grom, wringing wet 40 kg Jimi Wernham runs past me; ‘Hey CP, did you see my air revo! I’m spewing I didn’t land it aye!’ …are you doing a circuit to land one grom? ‘Yeah, yeah I will aye!’