Cover photo: WSL/Sloane

For the first time in history, Brazilian men's surfing in the world surfing elite surpassed Australian surfing in 2018, Stab reported yesterday based on a study carried out by its staff.

To compile it, a score was given to each surfer from each nation in the final rankings of the last 20 years, the result was as follows:

The graph shows the steady rise of Brazilian surfing, first surpassing Hawaii in 2011 (Medina joins the tour) and then the United States in 2014 (Medina and De Souza become world champions).

What kept Australia up there, apart from the titles of Fanning and Parko, was the huge number of surfers making up the CT and either fighting for the title or at least getting decent results, a situation that Brazil reached last year (with three of the first four being from their country).

It also lost ground to the rise of emerging nations such as France, Japan and Tahiti.

Despite John John Florence winning two titles, Hawaii has stood tall over the years.

One wonders what this graph would have looked like if the islands separated from the United States had not been taken into account.

Among the women there is no “Brazilian Storm” but rather the opposite, with only one member (Silvana Lima) Brazilian women’s surfing is now at a similar level to that of the late 1990s. The biggest novelty is the ground lost by Australia, gained by the United States, which is very close to overtaking.

Steph Gilmore's dominance doesn't find many strong partners and she has solid competition in Lakey Peterson, Courtney Conlogue and Caroline Marks.

In this chapter, if Hawaii had been considered together with the United States, things would be quite different.