Only One Non-Brazilian Has Won A Men’s CT Event In 2018

Before the start of the 2018 Championship Tour season, we published a piece titled: “Brazil Is Officially The World’s Best Surfing Nation”.

Clickbaity?

Yeah, a bit. But the premise of our claim was clear: for the first time in history, Brazil held the most Men’s CT slots of any surfing nation (11, to USA’s 10 and Australia’s eight) in 2018.

Stab’s commentariat was quick to revolt.

“By the same logic, McDonald’s must be the best food in the world, since they have more restaurants than any other company,” said Occ Topus.

“Certainly they are the best at poo stance, backpaddling, claiming average rides, and surfing in excrement. Well done!” declared Captain Goodvibes.

Even our own Jake Embrey, AKA Noa’s Last Dart, fanned the flames: “Yeah…well they don’t have cool, anti-comp, ciggie smoking surfers like we do. I’ll start pretending to care about comps when an Aussie starts winning.”

Now 10 events into the season, we’re starting to understand the true extent of Brazil’s dominance.

Currently, three of the top four surfers in the world are Brazilian. One of them, and of course we’re talking about Gabriel Medina, is highly favored to become this year’s World Champion. And here’s the real kicker: across 10 total events in 2018, there has been only one non-Brazilian winner on the Men’s CT.

Tip your visor to Julian Wilson who, with JJF sidelined and Mick now-retired, is the last great hope of Anglo-surfing supremacy.

So while our claim, “Brazil Is Officially The World’s Best Surfing Nation,” was designed to incite just a smidgen of patriotic chaos, the point is now qualified as an irrefutable truth.

But there’s also truth in Embrey’s ironic comment.

Despite Brazilians dominating the comp circuit, Aussies and Americans will rarely look to the Açaí Nation for surfing inspiration.

This fact is driven home by Stab’s reader survey, which after mining the innermost thoughts of several thousand surfing subjects (the vast majority of whom are Aussie or American), revealed the following surfers as most popular:

Any surprises here?

The first Brazilian on the list is world number two Filipe Toledo, who sits at a respectable sixth place. The next is Gabriel Medina, all the way at number 35. Between the two are names like Conner Coffin, Torren Martyn, and “Other (please specify)”. 

So while it may objectively be the “best surfing nation”, Brazil still fails to garner cultural capital in the same way as free-wheeling Westerners.

And while that may be noteworthy on face value, we can only imagine how few fucks Medina, Toledo, and Ferreira give from the top of the podium.