After dropping off the 2019 world championship tour due to injury and illness, Hawaii pro surfer Coco Ho made the comeback she’d hoped for, and came out on top, winning first place at Sunday’s Michelob Ultra Pure Gold Rumble At The Ranch with partner Filipe Toledo of Brazil in Lemoore, Calif.

It was the first WSL surf competition held since all events were canceled in March due to the coronavirus pandemic.

There was music in their matchup: Ho, as graceful and powerful as a ballerina, executed swooping cutback turns and smooth double barrels in her finals rides, and Toledo evoked flamboyant aerial alley-oops between tucks into tubes in the finals wave that earned him the day’s top score of 9.67.

And Ho’s smile as she held up her trophy on the winners’ dais was pure Hawaiian sunshine after a tough year that included the death last month of her beloved uncle and mentor, world champion surfer Derek Ho.

The day before, the Ranch had rolled out a perfect, empty left-handed wave dedicated to her goofyfoot uncle.

“Yesterday was surreal to watch that beautiful empty left and imagine and celebrate Uncle Derek, it was awesome,” Ho said.

The Rumble was a charity event, so the North Shore native didn’t win any points toward requalifying for the championship tour, but it was an auspicious return in an elite field of 16 of the world’s top pro surfers, including Hawaii’s Carissa Moore and Seth Moniz, who made up a duo, and Kauai-raised Tatiana Weston-Webb of Brazil, who came in second with her partner Kanoa Igarashi of Japan, both Olympic qualifiers.

Ho and Toledo nominated Surfrider Foundation as recipient of the $10,000 prize in their name.

In another advance for women in surfing, who achieved parity of WSL prize money with men in 2019, the International Surfing Association last month announced its panel of judges — including one woman among 11 men — for the first-ever Olympic surfing competition in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. The woman judge is Tory Gilkerson of the U.S.

“That’s very cool; Tory is in her 20s and a great surfer (and) very accomplished judge,” said Sheri Crummer, a fellow Western Surfing Association judge.

But Crummer and Hawaii’s “Banzai” Betty Depolito, contest director for the Red Bull Queen of Waimea Bay, want to see more women judges next time.

“I sure would like to have a Hawaii judge and more women,” Depolito said, “especially as they might be surfing Teahupoo (in the 2024 Olympics), a radical wave that breaks on an outer reef, more like a Hawaiian wave.”