\n<\/p>\n
Molly Picklum joined the pantheon of Australian surfing champions after claiming her first world title with an imperious display at the season-ending WSL Finals in Fiji.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old from Gosford dominated 2023 world champion Caroline Marks of the US in the final at Cloudbreak after roaring back to post a 2-1 victory, having lost the first heat of the best-of-three final.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot believe it,\u201d an emotional Picklum said afterwards. \u201cI didn\u2019t make it easy for myself. I was pretty excited and made it hard, but I locked in and did what I\u2019ve done all year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Picklum posted a combined wave score of 10.50 in the opening heat as Marks pipped her with 12.50 to take the early advantage, only for scores of 15.83 and 16.93 in the next two heats to blow away the American and secure the Australian\u2019s title.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe [Marks] got me good, but I was still kind of there for the first heat, and then, I just found my form that second heat to combo, and she made one mistake,\u201d Picklum said. \u201cAnd then to do it again, it just like really solidifies it for me \u2013 there\u2019s no ifs or buts about my year this year, and I\u2019m so, so grateful to be taking the trophy home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Picklum was ranked No 1 for much of the WSL season having won two tour events and only finished lower than fifth once, and her consistency was rewarded with a ticket directly into Tuesday\u2019s title decider at the famous break in Fiji.<\/p>\n
Marks, conversely, had to fight through the heats to reach the final and by the time she got in the water to face Picklum, she had already seen off Bettylou Sakura Johnson, Caitlin Simmers and Gabriela Bryan over three qualifying rounds.<\/p>\n
While Marks began the final strongly, her exertions over the course of the day caught up with her and she could only manage combined wave scores of 8.03 and 6.24 in the second and third heats against Picklum, who at the same time threaded two barrels to impress the judges.<\/p>\n
Picklum follows in the footsteps of Australian greats Layne Beachley, Steph Gilmore \u2013 who last won the title for Australia in 2022 \u2013 and Tyler Wright in being crowned world champion.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Olympic silver medallist Jack Robinson, the only other Australian title hopeful this week in Fiji, was unable to progress beyond the first heat and exited contention in the men\u2019s event with defeat to Brazil\u2019s Italo Ferreira.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Australia Sport<\/span><\/p>\n Get a daily roundup of the latest sports news, features and comment from our Australian sports desk<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Ferreira eventually went out to Griffin Colapinto who reached the final with victory over Jordy Smith, but lost out to top seeded Yago Dora.<\/p>\n Dora outscored third-ranked Colapinto 15.66 to 12.33 in the first and only heat of the men\u2019s final to become the sixth Brazilian man to win the world title in the last seven years.<\/p>\n \u201cThe signs were all there for me and I felt something special this week since I got here,\u201d Dora said.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew something was going my way, it didn\u2019t matter whoever I was going to get in the final things were going to happen and I\u2019m going to come out with the win \u2013 I\u2019m so happy, it\u2019s unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Molly Picklum joined the pantheon of Australian surfing champions after claiming her first world title with an imperious display at the season-ending WSL Finals in Fiji. The 22-year-old from Gosford dominated 2023 world champion Caroline Marks of the US in the final at Cloudbreak after roaring back to post a 2-1 victory, having lost the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[179,11402,410,9206,9207,9211,593,1975,550,8140],"class_list":{"0":"post-18656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-display","9":"tag-dominant","10":"tag-finals","11":"tag-molly","12":"tag-picklum","13":"tag-surfing","14":"tag-title","15":"tag-wins","16":"tag-world","17":"tag-wsl"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}