It was yet another San Clemente surf showdown — but only one of these lifelong friends would be able to take the big win in Brazil.
Local surfers Griffin Colapinto and Cole Houshmand faced off in the finals of the VIVO Rio Pro; Houshmand securing the victory.
It was Houshmand’s second big World Surf League World Tour win, a repeat from last year’s Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach contest, where the two surfers also met up in the finals.
In the women’s event, it was Australia’s Molly Picklum who once again found herself on the podium, the third for the 22-year-old surfer this year and a victory that keeps her on top of the World Tour rankings. She won in a final against Luana Silva, who marked the first Brazilian female surfer to make the finals since 2007.
Colapinto’s final-heat finish puts him in striking distance of once again making the WSL Final 5, which happens in Fiji in September, for a chance at a world championship. He is now sixth in the rankings.
For Houshmand, his victory marked the first non-Brazilian to win the event since Hawaii’s John John Florence nearly a decade ago in 2016, according to the WSL.
“It doesn’t seem real, honestly, I’m speechless,” Houshmand said in a WSL interview. “It’s been a long year, and it’s been a lot of fun.”
Houshmand said he’s “just doing what I love.”
“The fans all week, whether they love me or hate me, it’s the most passionate people in the world. And I love it. I feed off it. I mean, we’re competing in a stadium here. I looked at the beach, and you can’t even see open space,” he continued. “It’s what we dream of and what we live for. I couldn’t imagine anything better.”
Houshmand posted the highest single-wave score of the event just minutes after the heat started, a 9.40 that gave him an early lead. A backup 7.50 put Colapinto in need of a score. He answered back and earned an 8.23, but ultimately his two highest scores couldn’t match Houshmand’s 16.90 total.
“To share another final with Griffin is like the dream,” Houshmand said, noting that both finals he’s made since joining the tour last year have been against his friend, who he grew up competing against. “I just went out there surfing with my best friend. We’re just like, hey, it’s like an expression session. We don’t even know what we’re doing, we’re just going to have fun.”
Colapinto — who was near a mid-year cut earlier this year — has found his momentum, making it to at least the semi-finals round in the last four out of five events.
Congratulating Houshmand, Colapinto said the week surfing in Brazil was about “trusting life and not getting too stressed out about the results and what’s going to happen and just letting the ocean call the shots, because that’s really what it comes down to at the end of the day.
“We don’t really know what’s going to come and how it’s all going to unfold,” he said. “So you just do your best to show up every day, be the best person you can, and let the rest unfold on its own.”