Gilmore and Ewing claim titles at Snapper Rocks

STEPHANIE Gilmore has claimed a seventh title at Snapper Rocks, while Ethan Ewing secured the men’s crown at the WSL Bonsoy Gold Coast Pro.

After days of rain, the event returned under sunny skies with solid surf, as a low tide delivered some of the best conditions of the window.

Competition was briefly halted earlier in the week after a shark sighting within 500 metres of the break forced officials to suspend heats under WSL safety protocols.

 

Low tide exposed the sand at Snapper Rocks, forming a packed beach as crowds streamed in from both sides of the NSW–Queensland border.

Gilmore returned to the break where she won as a 17-year-old wildcard in 2005 to claim her seventh title.

The final saw Gilmore take on 21-year-old Brazilian Luana Silva, who entered the decider after defeating American Sawyer Lindblad.

 

Gilmore delivered the defining moment of the heat with less than eight minutes remaining, posting a 9.50, the highest single-wave score of the day.

Silva responded with powerful vertical turns to close the gap, but Gilmore held on to win 17.33 to 14.07.

Gilmore said a deep sense of gratitude during competition helped ground her in the final.

“I think for me, there’s a whole lot of gratitude that I am able to feel when I’m competing,” she said.

 

“In the final then, or in every heat, I was paddling back out and I don’t even know what score I got – I don’t even know what Luana needed, and I would look back at the beach and be in complete awe of this opportunity that I have in my life to compete in front of this crowd.”

“It’s such a special and cool experience and there’s a wave of gratitude that comes over me and I think that really helps me to stay in a nice positive mindset.”

She added that surfers are fortunate to compete in the ocean, pointing to its spiritual and centring qualities.

“We’re lucky as surfers that in the ocean, it’s a very spiritual place as it is,” she said.

 

“I could imagine being on a tennis court or a golf course or in the NBA would be way harder to find some kind of spiritual clarity, whereas in surfing, we’re very lucky that we’re in the ocean and it’s a place where we all find some kind of solace no matter whether we’re competing or free surfing or whatever.”

In the men’s final, Ethan Ewing took on Japan’s Connor O’Leary.

Ewing set the tone early with an 8.33, combining compact turns, strong rail work and floaters to control the heat.

He carried that momentum through the final to secure the title after a strong run through the elimination rounds, winning 14.56 to 14.17.

 

Ewing said maintaining mental clarity amid the chaotic atmosphere of a major event is vital in tight heats, pointing to wave selection as a defining factor.

“The crowds just going crazy on the beach so it’s pretty hard to stay calm,” he said.

“But it just comes down to the wave selection, and that was actually really hard out there.”

 

“I was just going into that back end, just going, I have to make a really good call on which wave I go because he didn’t need much to really get over me, so that was really important.”

Ewing said he had spent significant time preparing at Snapper before the season, training on a wave he described as having “many different faces”.

“Before the season started, I was down here a lot, just trying to surf this wave,” he said.

 

“There’s so many different faces to this wave.”

“Even throughout the last few days, it changed a lot.”

“So, I feel like that really paid off in the end.”