Australian Molly Picklum and Brazilian Yago Dora won the World Surf League Finals, marking the first time since 2016 that first-time world champions were crowned for both women and men.
Picklum, eliminated in the heats at the 2024 Paris Olympics, defeated Olympic gold medalist Caroline Marks in the title match despite losing their first head-to-head heat off the coast of Fiji.
Picklum, 22, was seeded first based on regular season standings, which meant that if she won the first heat, she would have clinched the title. When Marks won the first heat, it became a best-of-three series. Picklum then won the last two heats.
“I didn’t make it easy for myself,” Picklum said on the broadcast. “I was pretty excited and made it hard, but I then just locked in and did what I’ve done all year.”
Dora, 29, is the oldest first-time world surfing champion — male or female — since Australian Joel Parkinson in 2012.
Like Picklum, Dora was the No. 1 seed based on regular season standings. He defeated Colapinto, the No. 3 seed, who upset No. 2 seed Jordy Smith of South Africa.
“Griffin looked on point,” Dora said. “Since his first heat in the morning, he was the guy to beat today, probably. We know his potential out here. He won last year (the Fiji regular season event). He was ripping today. I knew I had to believe in my own surfing. If I had the right waves, I was going to come out with the win.”
In 2023, Dora was seventh in the WSL standings and fourth among Brazilians. The top three Brazilians -- Filipe Toledo, Joao Chianca and Gabriel Medina -- made up that nation’s Olympic team. Due to limits on athletes per country, Dora was the highest-ranked male surfer to not make the Paris Games.
Dora improved to sixth in 2024, missing the five-man WSL Finals by one spot.
This season, Dora earned his second and third career Championship Tour titles during the regular season en route to the WSL Finals crown.
Colapinto, who was eliminated in the round of 16 at the Paris Games, has finished third, third and now second in the WSL Finals the last three seasons.
The WSL announced in May that it is changing its Championship Tour format starting in 2026, namely moving its most prestigious event, the Pipe Masters off Oahu’s North Shore, from the beginning of the season to the end to determine annual world champions.
The new format starting next season, what the WSL bills as the 50th year of professional surfing, will be nine regular season events starting in April, two postseason events in Portugal and Abu Dhabi and then the Pipe Masters as the finale in December.
The nine regular season fields of 36 men and 24 women will be narrowed to 24 men and 16 women for the two postseason events. The full regular season fields will rejoin the competition for the Pipe Masters, the 12th and final event.
The final season rankings that determine world champions will be made up of surfers’ top seven of nine regular season results plus the last three contests.
The Pipe Masters will award 1.5 times the rankings points of standard Championship Tour events and will “ensure the finale delivers elite performances, meaningful consequences, and defining moments in the world title race,” according to the WSL.
The top eight men and women heading into Pipe Masters — determined by the two earlier postseason events — will earn an advantage of deeper seeding in the draw at the finale.
