Watch: Crosby Colapinto and Ethan Ewing Score a Rippable Freesurf Ahead of Margaret River

Ethan Ewing and Crosby Colapinto faced off for the first time this year in the semifinals of the MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal. It was the best result for both surfers thus far, with Ewing holding down second place in the CT rankings (by a solid margin) and Colapinto off to a strong rookie season. He was eliminated by his brother a few weeks later at the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach and sits right behind Cole Houshmand inside the top 10, which now makes for an intriguing rookie of the year race as we reach the halfway point of the season.

Neither of those surfers will be the focus of the upcoming Margaret River Pro unless one of them comes away with a win. No, the focus at Margs will be entirely on the mid-season cut and Ewing and Colapinto are both safe from that.

A total of 10 surfers have already qualified above the mid-season cut line and that leaves just 12 more men’s spots available with some 25 surfers hoping to avoid the Challenger Series, finish out this year on the CT, and qualifying for next year’s tour all in one contest. You can imagine that’s a lot of stress — stress Crosby and Ethan have been free of while getting their West Oz warmups in this week.

Freesurfs going into CT comps can be a funny thing. How many times have you seen clips of places like Supertubos or G-Land (in 2022) absolutely firing only to shut down as soon as the contest window opens? It’s probably torture for the competitors who would definitely love to have their heats in peak conditions. But hey, at least they get to score a world-class wave at its best. So you can’t feel too bad for them. Fans want to see contests won and lost in the best possible conditions, too. But sometimes those comps are just a bit snake-bitten.

This freesurf with Colapinto and Ewing won’t go down as one of those epic warm-up sessions. The conditions look text book “rippable,” and honestly, there are plenty of fans who would settle for that rippable run of surf deciding who does and who doesn’t make this year’s mid-season cut.

The post Watch: Crosby Colapinto and Ethan Ewing Score a Rippable Freesurf Ahead of Margaret River first appeared on The Inertia.