WSL World Tour<\/a> next month.<\/p>\nThe two surfers won their respective divisions at the King and Queen of the Point event at Manu Bay.<\/p>\n
Butland, 24, battled through a field of 112 surfers in the Open Men’s Division while 15-year-old Morse topped a field of 32 surfers in the Open Women’s Division.<\/p>\n
The two surfers will now face off against the best in the world when the tour arrives in New Zealand, joining Raglan surfer Billy Stairmand as the three Kiwi representatives.<\/p>\n
The three surfers join an elite group of five others to have surfed at the top echelon of the sport.<\/p>\n
Butland stormed to victory in the final after a slow start, scoring 8.50 then a 7.87 to jump into the lead ahead of Elliot Paerata, Kora Cooper and Tao Mouldey.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, pretty special, I don’t even know where to start out. I’m pretty stoked,” said Butland.<\/p>\n
“The conditions put it on for us in our final, and boys were ripping.<\/p>\n
“It’s wild to think about the wildcard, I’m kind of tripping on it, eh, I can’t even believe it, to be honest.”<\/p>\n
Morse was the youngest of the women’s finalists and she left it until her last wave with less than a minute remaining to score a 6.93 and jump from fourth to first.<\/p>\n
“I was in tears after that final” said Morse.<\/p>\n
“I just knew that I was gonna get a wave at the end, so I was kind of just waiting, like I was at peace with the whole heat, and I know everyone was stressing on the beach, but I knew God had it under control and… yeah, I can’t believe what just happened.”<\/p>\n
“The May event (WSL) is a big opportunity. It’s really exciting. Yeah, I’ll be able to push myself against some really amazing surfers, so I’ll be really excited and training for all that.”<\/p>\n
The WSL Corona Cero New Zealand Pro takes place from 15-15 May at Manu Bay and features the top sixty surfers in the world.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alani Morse during the 2026 New Zealand National Surfing Championships in Gisborne. Photo: \u00a9 Surfing New Zealand \/…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-387715","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Alani](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4JUNOBL_260117NZSurfingChamps_01_JPG.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n