Tristan Roberts won his third bodyboarding world title on Monday at the Gran Canaria Frontón King, beating Peru’s Christopher Bayona 13.25 to 12.25 in a Round 4 heat that put the 2026 IBC World Tour beyond the rest of the field.
The 29-year-old from Onrus did not need the event final, or another wave after that. The world title is decided on points banked across the season’s events, and Roberts arrived on Gran Canaria with a lead big enough that one heat win closed the argument.
He came out of the water a three-time world champion and was carried up the beach on the shoulders of the friends he has been bodyboarding with since he was a boy.
How Tristan Roberts Clinched It At The Gran Canaria Frontón King
The Frontón King is the last stop of the IBC World Tour and the event where the men’s world title is settled. Roberts went into it on top of the standings with 14,300 points.
Bayona posted 12.25 in their heat. Roberts answered with 13.25, and that was the championship.
The Onrus Friends Who Carried Him Up The Beach
Roberts was born in Cape Town on 31 January 1997 and moved with his family to the Onrus and Hermanus stretch of the Overstrand coast when he was seven.
His older brother, about eight years ahead of him, put him on a bodyboard at six or seven, alongside the local crew known as the Local Onrus Clang. He has described bodyboarding as the only sport he has ever known.
The friends who hoisted him out of the water on Gran Canaria came from that same group. They were there for the heat that decided it.
So was his mother. Susan Roberts flew to Gran Canaria without telling him, and it was the first of his three world title celebrations she has been at in person.
Overstrand Municipality marked the win in a notice to residents, describing him as an ambassador for South Africa, for Hermanus, for Onrus and for the Overstrand. He is a Hermanus High School old boy and has ridden for Pride Bodyboards since 2011, on a pro model called The Realest.
The Season That Took Him To Gran Canaria
Three results carried him to the top of the standings before the final event:
- Morocco World Bodyboard Championship, Anza Point, Agadir — won, 5,000 points
- Antofagasta Bodyboard Festival Men Prime, Nilda Point, Chile — won, 5,000 points
- Itacoatiara Pro, Brazil — 4,300 points
Morocco opened the season and he won the final 15.50 to 12.75 against local rider Chajri Badr Eddine. The ride of that event came earlier in the day, a 10-point air reverse in the semi-final that took him to a 17.60 heat total.
Vert Magazine reported that the Morocco win made him the seventh bodyboarder to reach ten or more Men’s Pro Division World Tour event wins.
Antofagasta followed in Chile, his second Men Prime title at that festival. Hermanus Times reported a crowd of more than 12,000 on the northern Chilean coast for the final.
A Third Bodyboarding World Title At El Frontón
All three of his senior world titles have been settled at the same wave. El Frontón, the heavy slab on Gran Canaria’s north coast, crowned him in 2019, again in 2022, and again on Monday.
He first saw it at 12. He has trained on it for years since and is treated as one of their own by the bodyboarders who ride it every week.
The 2019 title came the hard way, on the final heat of the season, with Roberts winning the event final 15.17 to 13.20 and taking the championship with it.
Before any of that there was a Pro Junior world title in 2014, won in Sintra in Portugal. Local reports in the Overstrand describe him as the first bodyboarder to win both a Pro Junior and a men’s senior world crown, and the first South African to hold three senior men’s bodyboarding world titles.
The Frontón King itself runs to 31 October, and the event title is still to be decided.
