We’re a bit pressed for time on this article – given that we just got back from interstate – so this will be a pretty ‘lite’ version of the usual overview:

Conditions

Trestles gets called a playground, a skate park for surfers, a high performance wave and plenty more. What you can expect going by the break itself and the forecast is fun, 3-5’ rights and (shorter) lefts with plenty of blank-canvas walls for expression, flair and the rare barrel.

As far as a history of success goes, we’ve made up a new table on our sortable data page that shows the results of 16 surfers over the past 5 Lowers events. Check it out (bottom of page) and see who has been the most consistent at this event over the past few years. For those too lazy to jump between tabs, there is a quick overview of the past few years from R5 onwards below (via aspwedge.com).

Based on the forecast, the break features and the surfers’ past results at this event, here are our nominations for strong ‘conditions’ surfers for this event:

Mick Fanning

Reigning 2015 champ, solid EATP, EAHS, 1-4’ and Point Break totals. For a WSL Tier B, Mick looks very solid indeed.

Gabriel Medina

Gabe ranks well in Points, Left/Rights, 1-4’, 4-6’, EATP and EAHS. He hasn’t done better than a 3^rd (2015), but he remains a solid option here.

Filipe Toledo

A home break for the Brazilian? You betcha. Filipe has the top EAHS, as well as solid numbers in both 1-4’ and 4-6’ conditions.

Adriano de Souza

ADS isn’t quite having the best post-title year, but he is Mr Consistent out here. He also has the 2^nd best EATP and the best Left/Rights numbers in the field.

Jordy Smith

Jordy has missed 2 of the last 5 Lowers events due to injury, but those he attended were enough to impress: 5^th, 3^rd and 1^st in 2013-15 respectively. That’s a great trajectory. He’s not killing any of the individual stats areas, with a 5^th-best in both Points & Lefts/Rights conditions being his stand-outs, but he is definitely successful here.

Conditions Warnings

Kelly Slater

Kelly is actually solid out here, with some amazing stats at this event over the years regarding percentage heat wins and results. The main thing that get Slater into the warning frame for conditions is his self-described lack of motivation/drive when it comes to waves of lesser quality. It will be playful out there, and the GOAT can definitely play, but there are some tricksters in this event who will be hungrier, faster and (dare we say it) younger than Kelly when it comes to 3’ ramps. One more warning: banana boards.

Julian Wilson

For 2014-15, Julian managed an EAHS of 10.1, which is the worst of any 2016 surfer who has previously competed at the event. Nobody is questioning Julian’s ability in these conditions, but he HAS been inconsistent this year and his figures warrant a warning.

Brett Simpson

It’s not often that we have a ton of data on a wildcard, but Simpo’s recent WSL tour stints have provided us with some solid numbers. Too bad they stink.

Form

Who’s carrying a bagful of swag into this contest? Who’s dragging their ego from contest to contest? Let’s check the form guide…

John John Florence

John John is the new man-in-yellow, the big cheese if you will. He has been in 3 of the past 4 finals and his AHS for the year is second only to…

Mick Fanning

It’s hard to talk form when the surfer in question was absent last contest, but Mick has been so solid this year that you’d have to wonder if this part-time thing suits him. He has the best AHS for the season, and has had a 3^rd, 5^th, 1^st run in his past 3 outings.

Gabriel Medina

Somebody had to lose that semi-final in Tahiti, and Medina was only narrowly beaten. Medina has been a machine since Bells and we are willing to bet that he will have more than just the one event win by the end of the year.

Kelly Slater

It wasn’t all that long ago that Kelly was making the form warning lists. With a 3^rd, 5^th, 1^st in his past 3 events, Slater is looking again like the young and nimble 39 year old who won an 11^th title in 2011.

Kanoa Igarashi

13 isn’t an unlucky number for Kanoa; he’s had 6 straight. The kid just doesn’t lose before R3 it seems. He also won the Pantin Classic 6000 on the QS a few days ago, so he’s looking solid in playful 3-5’ conditions.

Form Warnings

Stu Kennedy/Jack Freestone/Ryan Callinan

This trio are the unlucky crew representing a 25^th place in their past 3 outings. Even our man Ribeiro is looking down on them.

Jeremy Flores

Flores has some OK numbers at Trestles, but his 2016 is looking dire. Flores needs to find some inspiration and soon.

Nat Young

Nat’s 13^th at Tahiti capped off another disappointing end to a promising start. His two 5^th places at Bells and Margaret River are keeping him the qualification race, but he will need to bring out some small wave wizardry if he wants to do well out here.

Heat Draw

While much less important when compared to conditions and form, the draw should still be a partial consideration. Having 3 surfers in a R1 heat, or even 2 surfers facing off in R2, is bad form. If you want to play around with heat win and R2 possibilities, we recommend wslbracket.com as a fun way of predicting possible result match-ups. Be aware though that a single change from your projections can alter the following round entirely.

Sleeper Picks

We like to offer a few suggestions that may not be on everyone’s radar. Any success that involves deviating from the popular vote will provide a huge advantage for players willing to take the risk. Since the % owned features are unavailable from the WSL and FS games until lock-out, we are simply making our best guess as to who will be low in the popularity stakes for each event.

Top

With a list of names such as JJF, Medina, Slater, Jordy and Julian, it’s hard to find a sleeper. Adriano would be a solid POD, but he’s too overpriced in FS to justify. We like Ace in this group; he won’t be super-popular, he’s looking sharp this year and he doesn’t mind the conditions here either.

Mids

There are some surfers that pick themselves in this group, but with the mids representing a large part of your team, you can afford to sneak in a Sleeper as well as Mick and Filipe. Kanoa is our pick.

Low

Guys like Freestone and Flores will probably be the popular picks here, so we’re going to suggest you try your luck with Alejo. He could crash just as easily as succeed, but he has an event AHS greater than JJF’s and he’s never out of contention for making a few rounds…

Teams

We’ve decided that nobody wants to see our below-par personal teams, so we’re only posting the numbers teams as an overview of our projections from now on. If you really want to beat our non-numbers team, join the clubhouse (it’s not that hard – in both cases).

WSL numbers team

There is some ugly friendly fire going on here, but that’s neither here nor there when it comes to the numbers team. Fairly solid really, but also fairly predictable; we expect that there will be a lot of similar teams in this event.

Fantasy Surfer numbers team

This mix, with it’s discounted values, offered an opportunity to select half of the WSL Tier A group. The thing is, most players would have similar options. Jadson was a surprise, but we’ll wait and see…

The Outliers

For each event in 2016, we will produce a list of ‘outliers’ that represent some kind of anomaly within our selection analyses. Maybe there are factors that a spreadsheet can’t detect, maybe all of the numbers point a god-awful result at this event, or maybe their recent form simply contradicts their previous averages.

Here are our outliers for Tahiti:

John John’s Knee

A body part as an outlier? You better believe it. People will have dedicated ten times the number of hours reading about JJF’s knee than this article come H1’s siren. We suggest you keep an eye on it yourself.

Matt Wilkinson

Is the second-coming of Wilko already over? Does he have a few more surprises up his sleeve? His coach beat JJF in R2 here last year, just saying…

Seabass

Zietz surprised us with his projections for this event. Maybe his improved seeding can make things easier this year, but be wary.

Surf-stats Clubhouses

Now that you know the team break-downs, it’s time for you to create a team that will hold our selections to account. Sign up to our WSL Surf-Stats group (password – SS) or the Fantasy Surfer Surf-Stats clubhouse (password – SS) and challenge yourself against us and our readers. We will give a shout-out to each winner and analyse their team.

As always, feel free to comment or leave your own team selections below.

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