Does a lack of lefts hurt goofy footed surfers? Eli Hanneman probably doesn’t have an opinion other than wanting to be back on tour. Photo: Brent Bielmann//World Surf League
It feels like the 2024 Championship Tour season ended yesterday. But it’s already time to start talking about next year as the WSL released the tour schedule for 2025. There were a few glaring changes: The schedule features two more events (12) than last year (10), the mid-season cut now happens after seven contests instead of five, and, of course, Fiji will determine the world champs instead of Lower Trestles.
But behind the big changes, I made some more nuanced observations about increased travel, preference toward regular footers, cash flow from Latin America, and the return of the tour to Africa.
Here are my four observations about the 2025 schedule:
Surfers Will Be Jet-Lagged to Start the Season
The first thing that caught my eye when looking at the 2025 tour was the travel-heavy start. In recent years the start of the CT season has been relatively light for travel, with multiple events bunched together in Hawaii and/or Australia.
Now that the Abu Dhabi pool has replaced Sunset Beach as the second stop on the tour, instead of the one-mile stroll down the beach from the first stop, Pipeline, CT surfers have to fly 8,600 miles to the Middle East. Then they’ll go to Portugal, El Salvador, and Australia. That’s a total of 26,250 air miles traveled over three months for the first five stops – more than a trip around the planet’s circumference.
To compare that travel with the previous three seasons, from 2022 to 2024, the first five stops on the tour required 5,900 fewer air miles traveled. And if you look at the two years before that it’s even more stark: 19,000 fewer miles in 2021 and 12,700 fewer miles in 2019.
So, how will that impact the tour? Maybe the surfers will require a few extra days before events to work off the jet-lag. I personally need at least a week before I feel dialed into a new time zone, however, these guys and gals are used to lots of global travel. It may have no effect at all. It’s something to keep an eye on, especially with the Hawaiians who have gotten used to sleeping in their own beds for the first two events of the year.
Are Goofy Footers at a Disadvantage for the Mid-Season Cut
The 2025 CT will feature two more events before the mid-season cut occurs. Previously, the cut was made after five events. Now it will be made after seven. More events pre-cut will presumably create a better probability that the cut sifts out the best surfers.
However, looking at how the schedule is balanced, from afar it appears that the cut will favor regular footers. The seven events before the cut feature three rights, El Salvador, Bells, and Snapper, and four split peaks, Pipe, Supertubes, the Abu Dhabi wave pool, and Margaret River. (Calling Margaret River a split peak is generous considering the vast majority of the waves ridden at Main Break are rights.)
The only proper lefts on tour will be Tahiti, the last stop of the season, and then Cloudbreak for the finals. There’s long been discourse that the tour needs more lefts to even out the playing field for the goofy footers – perhaps reintroducing stops such as G-Land or Uluwatu. But does the right-heavy tour pre-cut really favor regular footers? Looking at the history, that hasn’t been the case.
Since the mid-season cut was introduced, the events before the cut have always been heavy on rights – Sunset, Bells, Margaret River. There has never been a left-only wave before the cut. However, the percentage of regular footers on tour after the cut has never exceeded the percentage before the cut.
For example, in 2024, 23 out of the 33 surfers on tour (excluding injured surfers) were regular. That’s 69 percent. Fifteen of the 22 who made the cut were regular, which is 68 percent. In other words, the ratio of regulars to goofies on tour didn’t increase after the cut.
The same goes for 2023 and 2022. In 2023 the tour was 78 percent regulars before and after the cut. In 2022 it was the same story: 71 percent regulars before and after the cut.
The evidence (admittedly a small sample size) doesn’t show that a right-heavy tour leads to more regulars making the cut. We’ll see if this trend holds up under an even greater dose of right-hand surf at the 2025 cut.
More El Salvador Until at Least 2029
Perhaps the most unsurprising part of the 2025 CT schedule was that El Salvador will continue to be on tour for the fourth consecutive year. After El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele was reelected this year, it was all but guaranteed that the CT would continue making the trip to Central America. Hosting surf events to promote tourism has been key to the administration’s political platform and having the CT is an important piece of the puzzle.
It’s worth taking a step back to fully grasp the importance of the role El Salvador has filled. The CT has never had a stable partner in Spanish-speaking Latin America. Central America particularly is an awfully wave-rich portion of the world to have overlooked for so long.
But let’s face it, good waves are only half the battle in securing a CT stop. Getting a reliable partner who is willing to foot the bill for the event (and successfully deliver said event) is just as crucial. And that is what the WSL has found with El Salvador, which writes the checks without the aid of a title sponsor.
I’d wager that as long as Bukele is in power in El Salvador (until 2029), the CT has a safe home at Punta Roca.
Jordy Smith gets to compete at home again. Photo: WSL
J-Bay’s One Year Hiatus Is Over
When it was announced that J-Bay was excluded from the 2024 CT, the local surfers and stakeholders were devastated. The WSL’s explanation for skipping Jeffreys Bay was simple: They had to make room in the schedule for the Olympics and something had to go. Unfortunately, it was J-Bay.
Speculation was percolating around South Africa that there were ulterior motives, namely lack of government funding. But in hindsight, it appears that the WSL (at least for the most part) was up front, because J-Bay is back for 2025.
Give the WSL credit where credit is due. They replaced the missing CT event with a specialty event in 2024 and brought South Africa back to the tour ASAP after the Olympics were no longer a schedule conflict.
That said, is the axing of J-Bay going to happen every Olympic year since it usually takes place near or around the Olympic window? That’s the next question to ask. The tour deserves to have the flawless rights of J-Bay on the schedule. Hopefully they can work it in for 2028 when the LA Olympics claim the last two weeks of July.
