What is WSL? – Surfer's Guide

As we have seen and read on other occasions, surfing is a powerful sport worldwide, which every day gains a new number of fans and followers of the surfing culture.

The sport of riding waves like any other, has regulations and laws for its proper functioning and an organization in charge of handling everything related to the practice of this specialty worldwide.

The WSL or World Surf League, is the organism created to take care of the regulation and programming of the surfing competitions at a professional level around the world.

Among these competitions organized and regulated by the WSL we can mention  

• The Championship Tour   
• The Qualifying Series    
• The Big Wave Tour   
• The Longboard Tour

We want to remind you dear user that Calima surf is synonymous of trust and reliability within the surfing world. Since 1996 we are taking to all the public the task of promoting the learning and training of this fantastic sport through our famara surf school, where year after year we try to improve in order to meet all the expectations of our customers. So if you are interested in getting into the waves that our famara beach offers, do not hesitate and come, you will not regret it!

Now, let's go to what we are going … The World Surf League!

When was WSL created?

The World Surf League or WSL, as we know it today, has existed since 2015, when the ASP was officially converted into the WSL.

The idea of giving regulations to the practice of surfing comes from 1976, when the International Professional Surfers (IPS) was founded with the participation of Hawaiian surfers Fred Hemmings and Randy Rarick.

In 1983, Ian Cairns arrived at the organization and the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) appeared; hand in hand with the ASP, in the nineties the philosophy, "The best surfers in the world, the best waves in the world" became popular.

In 2015, the ASP evolved into the World Surf League, WSL.

Where can I see the WSL calendar?

If you want to keep up to date with all the surfing competitions, you only have to visit the WSL website; there you will find a detailed calendar of the competitions, divided also by sex and type of competition.

Included in this calendar is a photo of the champion surfer, who is in possession of the title and competes to defend it.

But as we don't want you to get too excited, we bring you the calendar, because we do!

Season Calendar 2020-2021 WSL Championship Tour | Source: https://www.worldsurfleague.com

And how do we view live WSL competitions?

The ideal and the dream of every surfing fan is to be able to attend the competitions in all the places where they take place.

However, sometimes this dream cannot be fulfilled; then you can watch the broadcast of the competitions on the WSL website, because generally speaking, when there is any competition, the WSL website is used to show the event worldwide.

All persons who have subscribed to the WSL notifications will receive an email notifying them of the competition and the broadcast schedule, as well as the link to access the broadcast.

WSL also has a Facebook page, through which you can also see the transmissions of the competitions, in addition to an App for Android and iOS.

To continue with the intrigue on this topic, below you can see an updated table of the classification, both for the men's championship tour and the women's championship tour, enjoy!

Qualifying table for the 2020-2021 WSL Championship Tour | Fuente: https://www.worldsurfleague.com

How many waves do they score?

All participants in a surfing competition score points with the two best waves they manage to ride; in other times, the scores of the three best waves were taken into account.

The WSL noticed that if the scores of the two best waves were taken into account, the riders were looking for better scores, with better and higher performance; since then, only the two best waves of each surfer will get a score.

Italo Ferreira, 2019 WSL Championship Tour Champion.

How do you score a wave?

In each surfing competition there are five judges, who assign points to each wave ridden on a scale from zero (0) to ten (10); then the highest and lowest scores are eliminated and the athlete receives a score equivalent to the average of the three remaining scores.

There is no maximum number of waves surfed; the surfer will receive his score according to the two best waves he has ridden; this way he accumulates his score, where the maximum value is 20, if he gets 10 points in each of his two best waves.

The manual with the WSL rules and regulations

The rules governing the practice of surfing are contained in a 113-page manual available on the WSL website.

Just click here to get up to date with all the rules and laws governing the sport of wave riding.

We hope this post has been informative for you, as we have seen before WSL is a great competition that every surf lover should have seen at some point, and if not now is your friend's time!.