Listen: The Inside Story on the ‘Best Event In Pro Surfing History’

With an absence of pro competition due to the pandemic, our thoughts inevitably turn to classic waveriding tournaments of yesteryear, and chief among them is surely the now legendary Rip Curl Search event ‘Somewhere in Mexico’ in 2006 won by the late great Andy Irons.

We chatted with Andy Higgins, former Rip Curl International Events Director about how it all came to pass, specifically putting on the first ever live surf event from an undisclosed location, quite a radical concept for the time.

Higgo travelled to Mexico on a scouting mission in 2005, surfed the place for a week and was happy to report back at Rip Curl HQ that the venue was, in fact, very much good enough for the Championship Tour.

A big swell lit up the venue for the Top 44, delivering perfect grinding righthand sand point surf at a venue only referred to in the media as ‘La Jolla’.

As for the surf itself, Slater gushed, “This place is better than the Gold Coast and better than Jeffrey’s”.

Following the event, word inevitably got out as to the exact location, now known as Barra de la Cruz, and after a brief initial flourish of surf tourism, the sandbar itself is reportedly a mere shadow of its mid-naughties glories.

Get the inside scoop on how the project came together, what the event was like to experience on the ground at the time, and the legacy of the Search CT events.

Running time: 43min 20s

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