Saturday 10th December 2022, was a historic day at URBNSURF when the first World Surf League Qualifying Event took place at the Tullamarine based wavepool.

Xavier Huxtable and Nyxie Ryan walked away winners on the day bagging 1000 points each, which will help towards their push the a spot on the Challenger Series.

On my podcast, the Crankin Surf Podcast, we have been awaiting the first event at the pool and feel it’s just the start of what can be achieved mixing competitive surfing and the pool.

With the Sydney version due to open in 2024, we will see more events in the pool.

The format was fine once you realised the females were on the right hander and the males on the left hander and both could be ran at the same time.

We know it’s not the ocean but it allowed consistent surf all day and could have even had the finals under lights, although this was not the case this time.

Could this be a preview of a land based Olympic event of the future?