The Cost Of Mistakes
Analyzing every single wave of the 2019 CT season to see how pressure and errors affect performance.
It’s 2k23, and surfing has found itself in interesting territory.
We’re now included in a Greek sporting event (the world’s largest), and the effects are seeping into the periphery. It mightn’t mean all that much to the casual fan, but it does to the world’s best surfers and the folks who draw up their contracts. Oh, and to the people of Teahupo’o.
Things are getting less cowboy by the day. Ex: Surfing now matters (?) enough to attract the interest of a team of sports scientists at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. They were curious about the psychological effects of pressure and errors in surfing competitions. So, they decided to watch every single heat of the 2019 season (!), twice (!!), to dig up the rarest element in the entire surf world: objectivity.
Let’s see what they found.
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Aug 14, 2026
