May 4 : Eight-times world champion Stephanie Gilmore marked her 2026 comeback with a home win at the Gold Coast Pro at Snapper Rocks on Monday, with Ethan Ewing taking the men’s event to make it an Australian double.
Gilmore, the Queen of Snapper Rocks, held off Brazil’s Luana Silva, who earlier in the season posted a photograph of herself as a tiny child with Gilmore to celebrate the return of her hero to the world tour.
Gilmore, 38, took two years off to focus on free surfing and other projects, and had been knocked out early in her first two comeback appearances.
“I really didn’t think I was going to win a contest this year,” Gilmore said. “I’m trying to be positive, but I was also like, the girls are just at a whole new level.
“I wanted to push myself. I wanted to feel that feeling like, ‘Can you do it?’ … So really, I’m just so stoked.”
In a contest she had already won six times, Gilmore beat 2024 champion Caitlin Simmers in the quarter-final and rampaging Spanish rookie Nadia Erostarbe in their semifinal.
The greatest women’s surfer of all time racked up a strong 7.83 out of 10 for a series of sharp carves in her first run of the final.
Silva, 21, answered by riding a long wave hundreds of metres and out of the contest zone, to score only 5.17.
Her 7-point second ride was no match for Gilmore’s 9.5 as she repeatedly blasted the lip in front of a giant, screaming hometown crowd.
Silva nevertheless rose to world number one as the tour heads to New Zealand and the long left-hand walls of Raglan for the fourth of 13 events.
The Gold Coast produced high-quality right-hand point breaks from the get-go for the men.
Ewing snaffled a long wave on the buzzer and finished it with a thick tube for a 9-point ride to snatch his semifinal from fellow Queenslander Liam O’Brien, while Japan’s Australian-born Connor O’Leary overcame Brazilian maestro Filipe Toledo.
In the final, Ewing’s smooth and powerful forehand carves notched up 8.33 to establish a lead. O’Leary stayed in contention with a trademark series of vertical turns for a 7.67 but finished with a 14.17 total to Ewing’s 14.56.
“It’s been such a big goal of mine, because it’s like an hour away from home, and I used to be a little kid and come down here and watch this event,” Ewing said. “So yeah, this has been at the top of the list to win.”
