The blue stops in the third round at the second stop of the World Tour played on the wave of Margaret River. Leonardo is now ninth in the general classification
Fatigue among sub-optimal waves and (a lot of) waiting for the surfers of the Tour della World Surf League in Margaret Riverin Western Australia. At the second stop of the world surfing championship, bad luck materializes with conditions that were never at their best. “It looks like snowboarding,” says Gabriel Medina at one point; but with the ocean there is little room for negotiation and everyone ends up in the same mess. Also Leonardo Fioravantiwho to tell the truth did well on the slightly dirty but still workable three meters that opened the contest, sweeping away Seth Moniz. On the path of the blue, however, here is George Pittar who makes the Italian’s third round indigestible: the last wave magically opens and gives the Australian the score necessary to overtake.
pittar runs
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Leonardo says goodbye and can already set his sights on the third stage, but Pittar cannot. A long ride continues that leads him to win his first career race, beating him along the way four world champions: Filipe Toledo in the first round, Yago Dora in the quarterfinals, Italo Ferreira in the semifinals and then Gabriel Medina (all Brazilians). In the final, the Australian also manages to get the highest score of the entire competition, a nine perhaps a little given away by the judges but which allows him to put the seal on it. Pittar, 23, is considered a young underdog and he is only in his second year in the Tour, but now he sits in number two place in the general classification just behind Medina, while Fioravanti remains in the top ten and consolidates himself in ninth place with the same score as Kanoa Igarashi, eighth.
women
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On the female side Lakey Peterson beats Luana Silva and wins her seventh victory in a Tour event, the second in Margaret River, a trophy already obtained in 2019. The 31-year-old American surfer is one of the veterans. In the past she had admitted that she had always been intimidated by the power of the Western Australian wave. She now leads the standings alongside Gabriela Bryan, who won the inaugural event at Bells Beach. Next stop for the best surfers in the world: Gold Coast, on the east coast. An iconic stage, but one that disappeared from the calendar in recent years. It returns now in 2026 with the bidding window opening on May 1st. In one of the places most densely populated by surfers (due to the crowding it is impossible to find a solitary wave on a day of good conditions), the crowd will be guaranteed.
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