The Arica QS is not just another championship. In the annual calendar there are 11 QS 3000s, there are about 30 QS 1500s and the same number of QS 1000s and about five QS 10.000s. Unlike the CT, there are very few, three to five (?), events that can put a surfer in history and make a speech about everything that athlete is thanks to that victory.

The winner of El Gringo goes down in history and says something very important about himself forever, to show his grandchildren and great-grandchildren: class, balls, technique and instinct.

Whoever wins here can basically dominate any wave in the world.

“They think this wave is Pipeline,” said one of the tournament organizers, Francisco “el Oso” Gana, earlier in the day, while he was going to attend to the Japanese Takuto Ota who had been seriously injured and an ambulance had already been called.

The scene was grim, the young, skinny Japanese man was sitting, leaning against the wall on the road to the island, his very nervous father was telling him things that no one understood, and the surfer's vomit surrounded the scene and stank.

It seems that Ota will be fine, a broken rib, a bruise on his chest, 10 days of breathing badly will end and the Japanese will return to the water.

For his part, the former CT, Raoni Monteiro hit his head, he himself said that he got a bad scare, which made him black out for a moment.

A dozen boards broke, several leashes snapped, and there wasn't a surfer who didn't have a moment of fear, at least.

In short, a lot of items that are common in El Gringo, not at all common in a summer QS in France.

This, that sea that is more difficult than Pipe, that leaves you lying there vomiting and takes you to the hospital in an ambulance, is what makes the winner here win much more than 3000 points.

The Arica Pro Tour has now held its ninth edition. The list of champions speaks for itself: Gabriel Villarán, Alvaro Malpartida, Anthony Walsh

Today begins a ritual worth preserving. It is the Latin Pipe Masters, the only one of its kind, for ever and ever.