Canadian teenage surfer Erin Brooks drops into elimination round at Lexus Pipe Pro

By Canadian Press on February 5, 2025.

PUPUKEA — Canadian surfer Erin Brooks finished third Wednesday in her opening heat of the Lexus Pipe Pro, forcing the teenager to progress via the elimination round.

The 17-year-old finished behind Americans Gabriele Bryan, who finished seventh on tour last season, and Sawyer Lindblad, last year’s rookie of the year.

Brooks became the first Canadian to earn full-time status on the World Surf League’s elite Championship Tour by finishing in the top five of the second-tier Challenger Series last year. She won in her only previous appearance on the Championship Tour as a wild card, defeating Olympic silver medallist Tatiana Weston-Webb of Brazil last August in the final of the Fiji Pro.

Brooks had to wait her turn in Hawaii with conditions preventing competition since last week. Brooks and her coach were up every morning at around 6 a.m. local time to be ready for when the heats continued Wednesday.

Surfers are judged on their two best scores over the 30-minute heat. Bryan edged Lindblad 7.67 to 7.66 while Brooks was last in the three-women heat at 6.83.

Brooks scored well with her first wave with a 4.33 — the second best ride of the heat — but could not add enough to it to escape third.

She now faces 19-year-old American Bettylou Sakura Johnson and Australian veteran Sally Fitzgibbons in the elimination round.

At the start of the 18-woman competition, the top two from each of the opening-round heats advance to the round of 16 while the third-place surfer is relegated to the elimination round. The top two from each of the elimination-round heats also move on to the round of 16. with the third-place finishers are eliminated, placing tied for 17th.

From the elimination round,the competition moves into the bracket stage with the round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals and final.

The competition is taking place on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, famed for its Banzai Pipeline.

While Brooks’ family has a home a 10-minute drive away from the site of the competition, Brooks notes the testing Banzai Pipeline is always changing.

After Hawaii, the elite Championship Tour shifts to Abu Dhabi, Portugal, El Salvador, Australia (for three straight events), the U.S., Brazil, South Africa and Tahiti before closing with the WSL Finals in Fiji from Aug. 27 to Sept. 4.

The campaign opens with 18 competitors on the women’s side — the top 10 finishers from the 2024 Championship Tour, the top five from the 2024 Challenger Series, two WSL season wild cards and one event wild card. The field will be cut to 12 after seven events and then five for the season-ending WSL Finals.

The 36-competitor men’s field will be reduced to 24 at the midseason cut and then five ahead of Fiji.

The winning prize money ranges from US$80,000 in the season opener to $100,000 after the midseason cut and $200,000 for the WSL Finals.

Brooks started surfing at nine when her family moved to Hawaii from Texas. She has Canadian ties through her American-born father Jeff, who is a dual American-Canadian citizen, and her grandfather who was born and raised in Montreal.

Brooks gained her Canadian citizenship last year after a lengthy legal battle that limited her Olympic qualifying opportunities to the ISA World Surfing Games in March in Puerto Rico. Brooks fell short and had to watch the Olympic surfing competition in Tahiti from afar.

Brooks, then 16, scored a perfect 10 en route to winning the Bonsoy Gold Coast Pro last May and finished runner-up at the GWM Sydney Surf Pro later that month in Australia events on the Challenger Series.

Brooks will be travelling on tour with her parents and coach Jake Patterson, an 11-year veteran of the WSL tour who won the 1998 Pipeline Masters.

Brooks, whose family also has a home in Tofino, B.C., spent the off-season training with a regimen that included agility training on a trampoline.