By Lincoln Feast
(Reuters) – Hawaiian surfer Barron Mamiya cemented his reputation as a generational talent at his home break of Pipeline by defending his Lexus Pipe Pro title on Saturday, while veteran Tyler Wright beat out a crop of talented youngsters to win the women’s event.
The first competition of the 11-stop world tour took time to get going, with organisers waiting a week for decent conditions and eventually being rewarded with pumping waves on Friday and Saturday.
Mamiya tore through the early rounds, dispatching former champions John John Florence and Italo Ferreira with some giant scores, before triumphing over Leonardo Fioravanti by the barest of margins in the final.
The 25-year-old got off to a great start, with a 8.17 out of 10 for a deep backside tube at Pipeline and quickly followed it up with a near-perfect 9.80 for a long, weaving barrel on the righthander at Backdoor.
Fioravanti, who broke his back at the same venue a decade ago, got back into the competition with a long Backdoor barrel of his own for an 8.87, before locking in an even better tube.
The Italian needed a 9.11 to take the lead but the score came in at a 9.10, leaving the surfers’ two-wave scores tied at an impressive 17.97 out of a possible 20 but giving Mamiya the win thanks to his better top score.
“I really can’t believe it happened again, I’m super grateful,” said Mamiya, who scored a perfect 10 on a giant Pipeline tube on Friday.
“Winning it, you know, cool, right on, you did it, it’s a big deal. But trying to do back-to-back, I feel like that cements you as one of the best ever out here. That was my goal going to this comp and I did it.”
While much of the hype in the past two years on the women’s side has been around a crop of gifted and fearless young surfers, it was 30-year-old two-time world champion Wright who took the title over defending world and event champion Caitlin Simmers.
American Simmers, just 19, has been at the front of a pack of youngsters including Australia’s Molly Picklum, Hawaii’s BettyLou Sakura Johnson and 2025 rookie Erin Brooks of Canada, and racked up massive heat scores throughout the event.
But in an inconsistent final, Simmers struggled to find her rhythm, with a 6-point tube ride for Australian Wright proving the difference as she finished with a 7.70 two-wave total to Simmers’s 3.94.
“This is such a special win,” Wright said. “I really tried to bring in a lot more joy. I feel like last year I was injured a lot, and that didn’t help with the love of it, the joy of it and that’s what I really felt here.
“And it was so cool to have a final with Simmers out there, she’s like the Queen of Pipe for me.”
The tour next heads to a wave pool competition in Abu Dhabi for the first time, a move that has been criticised by Wright’s wife and other family members because of the treatment of LGBT people in the emirate.
(Reporting by Lincoln Feast in Sydney; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
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