Boardmasters Breakdown 2022
This week, Boardmasters returns to Newquay as a WSL Qualifying Series 1000 event, and a crew of C-Skins surfers including defending Men’s champ Jayce Robinson will be competing.
What Is A QS 1000 Event?
Last year the World Surf League, who govern professional surfing and administer competitive surfing, announced a change to a three-tier competitive format. The new structure reduces the need for surfers starting out in the lower tiers of competitive surfers to travel so extensively by introducing a regional Qualifying Series (QS) so that the cost of international travel doesn’t limit access to the upper tiers of professional surfing. The QS is separated into contest series in Africa, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe, Hawaii, North America, and South America, with the highest ranked surfers in each region at the end of the year qualifying for the Challenger Series. The Challenger Series (CS) comprises eight events at premium venues around the world; surfers take the total of their best five results out of eight, with the top 10 male surfers and top 5 female surfers at the end of the season qualifying to compete as one of the world’s top 34 Men or top 17 women on the prestigious Championship Tour.
Boardmasters is a WSL QS 1000 meaning that 1000 points are up for grabs, with men’s and women’s divisions in both open and longboard categories, so Newquay will be hosting some of the best surfing talent in Europe the North Africa/Middle East region this week.
What The Week Looks Like
With a team comprising some of Europe’s best surfers, we’re excited to see how the week unfolds for our C-Skins team riders. Whilst news of another heatwave dominate regular weather forecasts, we’re interested in the surf forecast for the rest of this week. Luckily, accompanying the sunshine and warm weather will be some contestable conditions and reasonable winds, with light to moderate north easterlies dominating for the majority of the contest window. Through Thursday and Friday there is set to be a small groundswell (just under 2 foot swell with a 10 second period) which then fades through the weekend until the finals look set to be fought out in small choppy windswell with a reasonably strong offshore wind to test the best of the competitors.
Who’s Surfing When?
Jayce Robinson
2021 Men’s Open champion Jayce kept everybody guessing until the last minute before announcing that he’d be defending his title.
Jayce hits the water in Round 2, which is currently scheduled to get going at 2pm on Wednesday. He’s surfing in Heat 2.
Adam Griffiths
Last year’s runner up, Bearman will be utilising his knowledge of his home break in his attempt to go one better this year. At the time of publication, the longboard heat draw hadn’t been announced, but Round 1 is due to get started on Friday at 9.20am.
Edouard Delpero
4x Boardmasters Men’s Longboard champion (2015, 2016, 218, 2019) and 4x European Longboard champion is back and will be a force to be reckoned with. At the time of publication, the longboard heat draw hadn’t been announced, but Round 1 is due to get started on Friday at 9.20am.
Logan Nicol
The current 2x Welsh Champion is slated for the last heat of Round 2 (Heat 16) so will be hitting the water late in the day on Wednesday.
Barnaby Cox
Having committed to the European Qualifying Series this season, former U18 British champion Barnaby’s already got a bunch of contests under his belt. His first heat will be Heat 8 of Round 2 on Wednesday afternoon.
You can follow the action on the WSL website or app.
Images by Luke Gartside (surf) and courtesy of Boardmasters, unless otherwise stated.
