The first Championship Tour event the World Surf League has ever staged in New Zealand reaches its finals on Monday at Manu Bay in Raglan, and it heads into the closing heats off the back of two of the most memorable performances of the 2026 season.
Brazilian world champion Yago Dora locked in the first perfect 10 point ride of the year in his quarterfinal against American Cole Houshmand, launching a full rotation aerial on his opening section before driving into a deep layback and unloading a sequence of high speed turns down the line at the famous left hand point break. The judges signed off the score within seconds, and the 10.00 combined with a 7.5 to give him a two wave total of 17.5 for the heat.
It was the first perfect ride of the 2026 season on the Championship Tour.
Hawaiian five time world champion Carissa Moore came back at him in the women’s semifinals later in the day with a 19.00 heat total, the highest single heat score posted by any surfer, male or female, anywhere on the 2026 tour to date. Moore, the first ever Olympic surfing gold medallist, surfed an all Hawaiian semi against Bettylou Sakura Johnson and landed two near perfect rides, a 9.80 followed by a 9.20, on backhand walls at Manu Bay. RNZ reported the result at the time as a season high in both men’s and women’s competition.
Moore goes into the women’s final later today against American Sawyer Lindblad, who fought off her compatriot Alyssa Spencer in the other semi to set up a second ever appearance in a Championship Tour decider. Lindblad is one of the new generation surfers the WSL is trying to push into the spotlight, while Moore is chasing what would be her second New Zealand title, sixteen years on from her first professional victory in this country back in 2010 as a teenager.
The men’s semifinals also run today. Dora carries the form line in against fellow Brazilian Italo Ferreira, who beat Miguel Pupo in his quarterfinal with a 9.0 single wave score of his own. The other semi pairs American Griffin Colapinto with Australian Morgan Cibilic, who edged Indonesia’s Rio Waida 13.60 to 13.50 in one of the closer heats of the event.
The winners of those two semis then meet in the men’s final, with a stop win, ranking points and tour leader status all on the line as the Championship Tour moves on next month to Bells Beach in Victoria.
For the New Zealand surfers in the draw the event has been more about the experience than the scoreline. The three wildcards drawn from Surfing New Zealand pathway events, Billy Stairmand, Alani Morse and Tom Butland, were all knocked out in their opening round heats on day one. Stairmand, a nine time New Zealand champion who lives in Raglan and has surfed Manu Bay his whole life, was beaten by Cibilic. Butland went down to South African Luke Thompson. And fifteen year old Alani Morse, the youngest competitor in the women’s draw, lost to thirteenth seed Bettylou Sakura Johnson but told reporters afterwards that the support from her home break crowd had been overwhelming, with RNZ reporting she could not put into words what it had meant to her.
The early exits were never likely to be the headline, however. The story of the event has been the venue. Manu Bay, three kilometres west of Raglan township, has been on every serious surfer’s bucket list since the 1966 release of the documentary The Endless Summer, which introduced the long, peeling left hander to a global audience. Until this year it had never hosted a top tier Championship Tour stop. The WSL added it to the 2026 calendar specifically to give the world’s best a long, technical wall to perform on.
The Waikato District Council, local iwi and Surfing New Zealand worked alongside the WSL to keep the event open to the public for free. Crowds along the headland at Indicators and the carpark above the point have built across the past ten days and are expected to peak today, with the finals window opening at 7.15am local time and conditions on the morning forecast pointing to clean, shoulder high to slightly overhead surf with a light offshore wind.
The Corona Cero New Zealand Pro is the fourth stop on the 2026 Championship Tour, after openers in Hawaii, Portugal and Western Australia. Bells Beach is next on the schedule, with the season culminating later in the year at the WSL Finals at Pipeline. The full event draw and live scores are available on the WSL website.
The bigger picture for surfing in this country is what happens next. The Manu Bay debut has drawn the kind of international broadcast coverage and athlete endorsement Surfing New Zealand has been chasing for years, and the case for Raglan staying on the world tour as a permanent stop will only strengthen if the finals deliver later today.
Were you down at Manu Bay this week, or are you tuning in for finals day? Tell us in the comments which finalist you think takes the stop win, and whether you reckon Raglan deserves a permanent slot on the world tour.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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