Carissa Moore of the United States competes during the 2019 Freshwater Pro-WSL on September 20, 2019 in Lemoore, California.
The Freshwater Pro surfing event is unlike any other on the World Championship Tour.
The waves are always present, they’re always consistent and they’re always uniform.
That’s because the event is held at surfing legend Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch, a 2,000-foot long, 500-foot wide high tech wave pool in Lemoore, California.
The format for the event is a bit different than most as well, in that the top two surfers get two bonus waves, one from the left and one from the right, in order to try to win.
The bonus waves served that exact purpose for American Lakey Peterson, who scored a 9.33 on the wave from the right and an 8.70 on the wave from the left — both better scores than her previous waves in Saturday’s final — for a combined score of 18.03 to win her second title of the season and fifth of her career. Those two scores beat out France’s Johanne Defay, her counterpart in the top two, who needed a 9.44 on her last wave to beat Peterson but fell and scored a 6.87. She finished with a combined score of 17.60.
Three-time world champion Carissa Moore rounded out the podium in third place with a score of 15.43.
Moore and Peterson are 1-2, respectively, atop the women’s World Championship Tour rankings now with seven events completed and three to go. Moore leads with 47,260 points followed by Peterson with 43,850.
Peterson, of Santa Barbara, California, also has one second- and one third-place finish this season. After winning her first event as a rookie in 2012, she was winless for the next five seasons but last year turned in a pair of wins and finished the season ranked No. 2 in the world.
Moore has earned five top-three finishes this season and has 21 event wins on the World Championship Tour. She won world titles in 2011, 2013 and 2015, but slumped in 2017 to a career-worst No. 5 in the world. She rebounded to No. 3 in 2018 and has lately rounded back into form. She won her first event of the season in July to move back into the world No. 1 ranking.
Moore and Peterson are currently in line to qualify for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 with three events remaining on the schedule. The top eight women in the rankings at season’s end will make it, but with a maximum of two per country.
Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.