Surfing News

Home

Quizzes

Newsletter

Snapper and J-Bay (and Gilmore and Toledo) Return To The CT in 2025

Originally posted on SURFER | By Ben Mondy | Last updated Oct 11, 2024 2:38 PM ET

“I swear it was a major driver for my qualification,” said the newly minted 2025 CT surfer Isobella Nichols. “I first made the CT in 2020, and that was the year Snapper dropped off the tour. I can’t wait to surf the Superbank with one other surfer and have all my mates and family on the beach.”

It’s been one of the WSL’s most glaring missteps that Snapper has had a five-year break from the schedule of elite surfing. We won’t go into the various political and sponsorship machinations, or the “he said, she said” of what was an ugly and unnecessary break-up. After all, it was James Joyce who said, “Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”

Let’s just be stoked that with the release of the new schedule, the omission has been rectified. After a fraught time, the star-crossed lovers are back together, which is much better than the Shakespear version, when they end up dead in a suicide pact. Anyway, the best surfers in the world will now find their own portals of discovery in the form of sand-bottomed tunnels behind the rock at Snapper.

“There’s really nothing like having that perfect canvas in front of you with a huge crowd cheering from the beach just meters away,” said Steph Gilmore, who has won here at home a record six times. “It’s a true spectacle and has such a rich history. It belongs on the Championship Tour, and I can’t wait to compete there again next year.”

Having had a break from the tour for a year, the 8x World Champion will return for what might be her last competitive lap. The 35-year-old will be going up against the 18-year-old World Champ Caity Simmers, Olympic winner Caroline Marks, and (if she qualifies) the winner of last year’s Challenger Series event at Snapper Erin Brooks.

“Watching the broadcasts this year, I almost decided to take another year off, as the standard of the girls was off the charts,” Gilmore told SURFER. “But I was always coming back to see where I’m at and what I can achieve. And the new schedule, with Snapper and J-Bay back on was a massive bonus.”

Jeffries Bay too has had a recent chequered history with the WSL. It has run three times since 2019, a victim of COVID-19, mismanagement and Olympic scheduling. That it returns in 2025, alongside Snapper, means that the two best right pointbreaks in the world are back where they belong; being dismantled by the world's best surfers.

That’s more good news for Filipe Toledo, who like Steph Gilmore, took a break from competition this year after securing his World Title in 2023 and has been given a wildcard spot for next year. Toledo had won three times at J-Bay, going back-to-back in 2016 and 2017, and will be the defending champion having won the last time a CT in 2023.

You really can’t fault the timing of these tour veterans and icons whose clean, polished and electric surfing is seemingly designed for righthand points. When you add El Salvador’s Punta Roca, and the more sluggish rights of Bells, Trestles and Margaret River, the schedule, while the best since the pandemic, could be considered to favour natural footers.

But let’s not punch a gift horse in the face, the return of two of the world’s most perfect righthand pointbreaks, and some of the icons of the sport to surf them is overwhelmingly positive news for surfing.

“It’s about as dreamy as the Dream Tour gets,” concluded Gilmore. “Snapper is a gift that keeps on giving, and I just got to make the cut to surf J-Bay. I don’t need much incentive, but that sure won’t hurt.”

This article first appeared on SURFER and was syndicated with permission.

More must-reads: