Welcome to the 33rd Edition of The Bodyboard Report! 🤙

I had the best weekend ever at my home break of Outerpool in 👉 Mossel Bay

Great weather, lean and super clean line up, glassy 4 - 5ft from Friday to Sunday without fail, surfing my lungs out, wave after wave.

That appears to be true… the surfing my lungs out part.

I think that this combo of abnormally high levels of endorphins, coupled with the blissful exhaustion, fuelled by the best barbecue and beer overload, caused my system to crash and I’ve been man down since Monday, drowning from this weird change of season flu.

I’m talking more snot than salt water. 🤧

You know that crazy cold where your nose runs like a faucet, sneezing all the time?

By day 3 you contemplate sticking 2 tampons up your Rudolph nose, sealing it off with that gross, sticky black and brown gunk you scrape off your board, just to make sure it’s watertight.

I’m no plumber, but luckily I came to my senses when I realized I would explode within an hour if I swallowed all that 👉 ju-uice… 😉

3 days of the best surf for 3 days of snot fest?

World’s a strange place, but an easy trade.

This week we’ve got a new king heading back to his home beach, Europe’s last dance, a queen who’s still winning, the money behind a world title, a fisherman’s kid from the Galápagos, and your first upcoming vote in the 2026 Bodyboard Report Card.

Off season?

“Snot” around here! 👇

The bananas have barely been put away and Gáldar is already going again.

The Spanish Bodyboard Championship runs from 13 to 15 November at La Guancha, on El Agujero beach, just down the coast from El Frontón.

The divisions are Open Men, Open Women, Under 18 boys and girls, Dropknee and Masters, and spots are limited.

All eyes will be on Armide Soliveres.

He’s the new Frontón King, and he won the ETB Gran Canaria Pro back in October too.

King Armide is on a roll and on the rise 👇

Here’s a bit of trivia you can use at the bar.

La Guancha isn’t new to big occasions.

In 2011, the very first ISA World Bodyboard Championship started at El Frontón and then moved to La Guancha for the rest of the event.

Pierre Louis Costes and Isabela Sousa won that one.

Awesome that 15 years later, the same stretch of coast is still handing out titles.

The European Tour of Bodyboard (ETB) ends its 2026 season in Mehdia, Morocco.

No date has been confirmed yet, but registrations are open.

3 European titles are already in the bag:

Luana Dourado has been on fire. 💖

At the Socorro Classic in Tenerife she won both the Open Women and the Junior Women.

Fabien is from Réunion, the island where riding most of the coast can now get you a €450 fine.

And here he is, European dropknee champion.

Funny how that puts a knee to the neck. 🤔

A few weeks ago we asked what happened to the Frontón Queen.

Well, she hasn’t gone anywhere.

On 14 October, Teresa Miranda defended her title at the ETB Gran Canaria Pro in Las Palmas, beating Portugal’s Teresa Padrela in the final.

That’s the same Teresa who scored a perfect 10 at El Frontón in 2020 and won the Queen title in 2018 and 2020.

How does one put Beauty and The Beast, pushing like a beast while taming The Beast into one sentence?

Let me go old school and say 👉 You keep chargin’ darlin’ 💖 you’re work!

Here’s a thing and a number that stopped me in my tracks.

An IBC World Tour Prime Series event pays US$35,000.

That’s not what the winner gets. That’s the whole pot, shared across the entire field.

Add up the full 2026 men’s tour, meaning the 4 Prime events plus Pascuales and Sintra, and you get roughly US$190,000 for the whole season.

Sounds like a lot of cash to us ordinary beach bums, but compare that with surfing’s world tour.

In 2025, a single men’s event on the WSL Championship Tour paid around US$575,000, and the winner alone took home between US$80,000 and US$100,000.

So one surf contest pays out about 3 x what bodyboarding’s entire men’s season does.

And the winner of that one surf contest earns more than 2 x full Prime Series purses put together.

Tristan Roberts just won his 3rd world title. Whatever his prize pot came to this year, it begs the question whether it is enough to live on, over and above the question of: Is it enough to retire on. Taking the exchange rate of 16 / 1 into account (ZAR vs USD), the immediate train of thought goes to: A Tristan is much better off than a Tanner or a Pierre or Amaury or Armide.

So how do our best riders actually survive?

Sponsors. Coaching. Clinics, like the one Tristan ran for kids at Voëlklip in his home town in February? That was a labor of love. As with all sports and athletes, there are side hustles and a lot of goodwill.

Although bodyboarding is bigger than the world gives it credit for, it isn’t the world tour of surfing and it doesn’t need to be. But the next time someone tells you pro bodyboarding is a glamorous life, show them the numbers.

Then show them how it is outnumbered by our passion. 🤙

Riders, if you’re reading this and want to tell me what it really costs to chase the world tour dream and help educate our tribe on the dynamics of being a pro, my inbox is always open. 👉 [email protected]

Loud bugle or anonymous, just let me know.

We want to hear and learn from you, so we can better help support you. 📩

Now speaking of chasing dreams and world tours…

Let’s turn to Jericco Rosero, your 2026 IBC Dropknee World Champion.

He grew up in the Galápagos Islands.

His dad took him out fishing from the age of 7, sometimes on trips that lasted days.

At 8, his mom took him to the beach for his first surf.

By 11 he was taking bodyboarding seriously, and at 13 he won his first contest.

It wasn’t easy. On one trip in 2018, his family went hungry, and he got sick after the contest.

He turned up to the 2019 World Cup in Portugal the day before his heat, didn’t know the wave, and went out early. He told reporters afterwards that he almost quit.

In 2022, after finishing 2nd to Dave Hubbard in Chile, he told Ecuador’s Diario Expreso:

“En Ecuador, aún, no soy nadie.” (In Ecuador, I’m still nobody.)

4 years later, he’s a world champion.

Dropknee sometimes gets called bodyboarding’s endangered species. But look at 2026:

Da DK doesn’t look very endangered to me. 🤙

The Pipe Bodyboard Championship has its waiting period booked for 19 February to 4 March 2027 at Ehukai Beach Park, Oahu.

Pipeline is where it all started for competitive bodyboarding.

The home of Mike, of memorable moments, and of magic.

More on that in the new year, if all holds up. 👀

👉 North Shore contest calendar 2026 to 2027

The season’s done, the champagne flew through the air like your favorite riders around the globe.

Every week until the end of the year, we’ll vote on one award (of sorts), so this is you’re time to have a say.

Next week we kick off with the first category, so be sure to check out your options before you cast your vote right here in next week’s email.

For Round 1, we are NOT talking move of the year, biggest air, and so on…

We are looking at -

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