San Clemente surfer has one swell of a year, making world championships and 2024 Olympics
Like many young surfers who grow up in wave-rich Southern California, Griffin Colapinto always dreamed of one day claiming a world champion title.
“I love surfing and I had the belief I could be the best in the world,” Colapinto said on a recent day during a rare break at home in Orange County between traveling to surf contests across the globe. “I’m still holding onto that.”
Colapinto, who grew up in the quaint surf town of San Clemente, is about to get his chance. The surf world converges next month at nearby Lower Trestles at San Onofre State Beach for the Rip Curl WSL Finals and he is among the five male surfers who made the cut for the World Surf League title competition.
Colapinto’s stellar surfing this year has also helped him lock in a spot for the 2024 Olympics, to be held at the bombing Teahupoʻo in Tahiti, as the sport for the second time rides into the Summer Games.
But first, the WSL finals, a one-day, winner-take-all event held on the best day of waves between Sept. 8 and 16, and a chance for surf fans to watch up close the world’s best battle on the cobblestone beach Colapinto calls his backyard.
And if Colapinto is able to beat out the other competitors, he’ll be the first surfing world champion from California in more than 30 years.
It’s a moment the 25-year-old has come painfully close to in recent years, falling just shy of the cut off in points to make the Final 5 the past two years.
“Everyone’s got their own timing,” Colapinto said in an online interview following a recent event in Tahiti. “I just have to trust the universe.”
In the surf world, Colapinto is a well-known fixture who has a relaxed, playful style on land, but a fierce way on the waves that has helped him carve his name among the world’s best – this year ranked No. 2 behind current world champion Filipe Toledo, a Brazilian who has also called San Clemente home the past decade.
Colapinto had an early start into the surf world. He was just 2 years old when he rode a wave tandem at San Onofre State Beach with his dad, Mitch, he recalled on a recent day while in Huntington Beach cheering on friends and younger brother Crosby, also a competitive surfer, during the US Open of Surfing.
He started entering amateur contests with the National Scholastic Surfing Association when he was 9, and quickly caught the eye of NSSA Executive Director Janice Aragon.
“Even at a young age, the thing that was different about him versus the other kids – he always had so much fun. He hasn’t changed. What you see with him now is what he was when he was 9 years old, this energetic kid with a full-of-life personality, always having fun on the beach,” Aragon said. “It’s so cool to see him not change.”
Despite his laid-back demeanor and his boyish charm, Colapinto was always a dedicated, hard-working competitor, she said. He won two NSSA national championships, in 2013 and 2014, and more on the USA Surfing circuit.
It was in 2017 when Colapinto hit his stride on the world stage. At 19, he earned the prestigious Triple Crown of Surfing, becoming the only Californian to ever stake claim to the crown and the first from the mainland since 11-time world champion Kelly Slater, of Florida, won in 1998.
Those results and others landed him on the World Tour in 2018, and he has been traveling the globe to compete against the world’s best in the hunt for the World Surf League’s championship title.
During his five years on tour, Colapinto has won a handful of major contests, but the chance at a world championship has eluded him.
The title has been decided at Lower Trestles the last two years.
“I feel like Lowers is my favorite wave in the world. To miss out on that, I was super sad,” he admitted.
But this is a new year and another chance.
“I’ve always been super good at losing. I get over it, really quick. I don’t hold onto it,” Colapinto said. “Maybe a day or two, I was bummed, and then I started looking at things and seeing the big picture of life and understood this is not the end all, be all.”
There’s other things that make him happy, outside of surfing, he said.
“Just doing fun things with my friends,” he said. “I love that, more than anything.”
That’s a mentality he’s passed on to his younger brother, Crosby, who is in arm’s reach of joining Colapinto on the World Tour next year.
“I love supporting Griffin because he’s helped me so much in my career, now I get to support him,” Crosby Colapinto said on a recent day, which happened to be Griffin Colapinto’s 25th birthday, with the duo taking time to sign autographs for fans who lined up in Huntington Beach.
The brothers are part of a growing “San Clemente Cyclone,” as it is being dubbed, a group of stand-out surfers being mentored by former World Tour surfer Kolohe Andino and Colapinto, who created “2 Percent Surf,” a production company aimed at sharing videos and stories to motivate up-and-coming surfers.
At surf contests near home and abroad, the group of San Clemente surfers cheer for each other from the sand, support each other when they stumble and openly share their mental rollercoasters following wins and loses.
Aragon and Andino have already been talking about how to rally the next generation to come out to support Colapinto at the world finals and expect surf fans from across the state and country to show up and cheer him on at Lower Trestles, wearing shirts with his name and waving the American flag.
“We’re going to try to get every kid who is not in school down there, cheering for Griffin,” Aragon said. “I think the support Griffin will have down there is going to be intense and insane.
“I think that will motivate him to do what he needs to do out there,” she added. “That’s his backyard, he can surf that place blindfolded.”
If he wins a championship in a few weeks at Lower Trestles, Colapinto will become the first California surfer to clinch a world title since 1990, when Santa Barbara’s Tom Curren won his last of three titles, and the second surfer ever from the Golden State.
“It’s huge,” said Peter “PT” Townend, surfing’s first world champion. “There will be a ‘2 Percent’ celebration that will never end.”
Through the decades, there have been different countries that have created a buzz and momentum on the World Tour. For Townend and a group of “Bronzed Aussies,” it was during the ’70s and ’80s. In the last decade, it was the “Brazilian Storm” led by Gabriel Medina’s three world championships and a group of high-flying countrymen making waves on the World Tour since.
“When Medina won, it gave confidence to that nation to say ‘We are as good as anyone in the world,’” Townend said, noting that the same can happen now with Colapinto and the other San Clemente surfers rising up the ranks.
“And that can create a whole new surge of American champions,” Townend said.
It will be no easy task. Colapinto is up against Toledo, known for his aerial surfing, which is suited for Lower Trestles, as well as Brazil’s Joao Chianca and Australians Jack Robinson and Ethan Ewing.
The five women competing will be Caroline Marks, a Florida surfer who has called San Clemente home the past decade, San Diego’s Caitlin Simmers, 17, Australians Tyler Wright and Molly Picklum and Hawaiian five-time world champion Carissa Moore.
After the sand settles at Lowers, there will be a break before the next competitive year starts and then it will be time for Colapinto to start training for the 2024 Olympics to be held this time next year.
Colapinto was named a few weeks ago as the first USA surfer to make the list, followed by Hawaii’s John John Florence, who competed at the sport’s 2021 debut in Tokyo.
“He’s a patriotic kid, just having a person like that as a representative going into the Olympics is just awesome,” Aragon said of Colapinto. “Just having him there and representing the country, the flag, is just going to be such a great moment for the USA. Hopefully, he will take home a gold medal.”
Colapinto said being part of of the Olympics wasn’t even part of his life goal growing up, and still he’s having a hard time wrapping his head around how big the Olympic stage is going to be. His grandparents, he said, are very excited.
“It was never a dream, because it was never a thing,” he said. “It’s crazy to think when I got into surfing, I never even knew that was a possibility. And now, I’m in the Olympics. It’s pretty cool.”