The world’s best surfers paddle out at Manu Bay this morning as the inaugural Corona Cero New Zealand Pro presented by Bonsoy gets underway, marking the first time the World Surf League Championship Tour has set up shop in New Zealand since 1976. Three Kiwi wildcards are in the draw, including hometown veteran Billy Stairmand and 15-year-old Raglan schoolgirl Alani Morse, who will both line up against the best-ranked surfers on the planet on a left-hand reef break they have ridden their whole lives.
The event runs from 15 to 25 May, with competition expected to take place across four to six days inside that eleven-day window depending on the swell. Manu Bay’s famous long left-hander will host the men’s and women’s draws side by side. According to Surfing New Zealand, this is the first combined Championship Tour stop ever held on home soil and the fourth event of the 2026 world tour.
For Stairmand, who has spent more than fifteen years grinding through the Challenger Series and represented New Zealand at two Olympics, the wildcard call-up is the moment a long career has been building towards. He told the WSL the chance to compete against the world’s best at his home break in front of family, friends and the wider Raglan community was "just crazy", and he earned the slot as the highest-ranked New Zealander on the Challenger Series. Stairmand is a nine-time New Zealand national champion and has been chasing a main-draw start on the world tour for most of his adult life.
Alongside him in the men’s draw is Tom Butland, who booked his place by winning the Backdoor King trial in April. Butland, a less familiar name on the international circuit, said earning a main-draw start at a Championship Tour event was "wild to think about". He will go up against names such as three-time world champion Gabriel Medina, Tokyo Olympic gold medallist Italo Ferreira and aerial specialist Yago Dora in the opening rounds.
The story almost everyone is watching, though, is the women’s draw, where 15-year-old Alani Morse will line up against eight-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore, reigning world champion Caitlin Simmers and Tahitian power surfer Vahine Fierro. Morse has lived in Raglan for five years and began competitive surfing at age seven, and she earned her spot at the Backdoor Queen trial in April. Speaking to RNZ ahead of the event, she said of competing against Simmers, "I’ve met her and she’s just a nice normal person and she just wants to have fun. You could be super-serious and it’s her job but she just wants to surf well and have fun." She added, "I’d love to end up in a heat with her because I think she would push me a lot."
Morse also acknowledged the gulf in experience between herself and the touring professionals, saying, "What they have done is insane. I’m just at the start but they’ve done it their whole life." She has admitted to keeping a few local secrets about Manu Bay tucked away rather than handing them out to her opposition, though she has been generous with general advice. Her stated ambition is to follow former Kiwi tour mainstay Paige Hareb onto the Championship Tour full-time, and a strong showing this week in front of the home crowd would be a serious statement.
Manu Bay, also known by its MΔori name Whaingaroa Manu Bay, sits on a volcanic reef shelf on the south side of Raglan harbour and produces a fast, mechanical left that can run for hundreds of metres on the right swell. The bay forms part of a three-section reef setup that also includes Indicators and Whale Bay, and locals have long argued it is one of the most consistent point breaks in the southern hemisphere. Organisers are expecting up to 7,000 spectators across the eleven-day window, with a daily call made each morning on whether the swell and wind are good enough to run heats.
The competition format is straight knockout, with timed twenty to thirty minute heats. Early-round heats put three surfers in the water with the top two advancing, and from the round of sixteen onwards it goes one-on-one. Each surfer’s two highest-scoring waves count toward their heat total, with judges scoring each ride out of ten. The RNZ beginner’s guide to the event has a useful explainer for anyone planning to tune in for the first time, including the priority system used when two surfers chase the same wave.
The economic and cultural lift for Raglan is significant. The town’s permanent population sits at around 3,500, and the WSL caravan brings hundreds of athletes, coaches, judges, media and crew on top of the spectator crowd. Local businesses have been preparing for months, and the event is being promoted as a centrepiece of the WSL’s fiftieth anniversary year. The last full Championship Tour stop in New Zealand was held back in 1976, and the sport has changed almost beyond recognition since, with airs, leashes, wetsuit technology and judging criteria all having moved on several generations.
For Kiwi surfing fans, the next eleven days are an unusually rare chance to watch the very top of the sport unfold on a familiar reef. Whether or not Stairmand, Butland or Morse make a deep run, the simple fact of three New Zealanders being in the main draw at a home Championship Tour event is a generational moment, and one that has been more than four decades in the making.
What do you think, will Alani Morse or Billy Stairmand cause an upset this week, and is it time the WSL made Raglan a permanent fixture on the world tour? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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