The most fossil fuel hungry tour ever!
The fabled second jewel of surfing’s Triple Crown has been erased from the World Surf League Championship Tour for the upcoming 2025 season. Sunset Beach, there on Oahu’s North Shore, no more. It is being replaced by Kelly Slater’s sparkling Abu Dhabi surf tank leading surf thinkers to wonder if, perhaps, the greatest competitive surfer of all time wanted to stab his least favorite wave in the heart as he is forced into retirement.
Slater’s disdain for Sunset very public over the years.
The tour will begin at Pipeline before burning excessive jet fuel to fly all the way to the United Arab Emirates. From there, it will fly halfway around the world, again, to Portugal followed by more jet fuel to El Salvador, even more to Bells, where it will finally conserve energy by plunking down for Snapper and Margaret. After the cut, Lowers, Saquarema, J-Bay, Teahupo’o will close out the regular calendar, with Finals Day being hosted at Cloudbreak.
In other words:
Stop No. 1 – Banzai Pipeline, Hawaii, USA: January 27 – February 8
Stop No. 2 – Surf Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE: February 14 – 16
Stop No. 3 – Peniche, Portugal: March 15 – 25
Stop No. 4 – Punta Roca, El Salvador: April 2 – 12
Stop No. 5 – Bells Beach, Victoria, Australia: April 18 – 28
Stop No. 6 – Snapper Rocks, Queensland, Australia: May 3 – 13
Stop No. 7 – Margaret River, Western Australia, Australia: May 17 – 27*
Stop No. 8 – Lower Trestles, San Clemente, Calif., USA: June 9 – 17
Stop No. 9 – Saquarema, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: June 21 – 29
Stop No. 10 – Jeffreys Bay, South Africa: July 11 – 20
Stop No. 11 – Teahupo’o, Tahiti, French Polynesia: August 7 – 16**
Stop No. 12 – WSL Finals – Cloudbreak, Fiji: August 27 – September 4
Or for the semi-illiterate:
Certainly the most gas-gobbling tour ever.
Coincidence?
The World Surf League’s media-shy CEO declared, “We’ve built this schedule to include more events and feature a variety of breaks. We’ve brought back some of the Tour’s most desirable locations, while aligning dates with favorable swell windows, to open up more opportunity for quality surf. We’ll see a great mix of locations from heavy-water barrels, to high-performance waves, and pristine point breaks. It’ll be an exciting showcase of the world’s best surfing featuring the incredible CT talent. We can’t wait to kick off in January 2025. See you at Pipe.”
Thoughts?