WHERE IS BELLS BEACH? HOW THE RIP CURL PRO FITS INTO THE CALENDAR OF WORLD SURFING LEAGUE...
0Where is Bells Beach? How the Rip Curl Pro fits into the calendar of World Surfing League events
It's Easter. which means at some point over the next few days someone who is either cool or is trying to be cool will ask you if you've been following the action at Bells. To the untrained ear. that could mean literally anything. But for the Australian sporting fan. it quite obviously means the Rip Curl Pro surfing competition. held at Bells Beach as the fourth leg of the World Surf League (WSL) tour. While a surfing tournament has been held at Bells or very close to it every Easter since 1963. there's still plenty of us who don't actually know where Bells Beach is. if the search terms the ABC SEO geeks* provide us is anything to go by. So where is Bells Beach? How does it fit into the WSL calendar? And do you win an actual bell if you win at Bells? We've got your answers. *Said in the most lovingly way possible The WSL tour: Every location for the 2022 season mapped Where is Bells Beach? The Bells Beach surf break is about 5km south west of Torquay in Victoria. about 25km from Geelong and 86km from Melbourne just where the little radical dude in the map above is. in the bottom right hand corner. Bells is the home to the longest continuously running pro surf competition in the world. having started in January 1962 before officially being moved to Easter the next year. Surfers have been recorded using the break as early as 1939. but had trouble accessing the beach until 1960. when Olympic wrestler Joe Sweeney hired a bulldozer to create a road. before charging surfers one pound per use to earn back his sweet bulldozery cash. Sweeney. incidentally. also created the iconic bell trophy awarded to winners at the end of the competition. Now I can hear what you're saying: 'I know Bells Beach. Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze hung ten there in Point Break way back in 1991'. Well. they said they did. But they didn't. The beach they filmed at was in Oregon. USA. and could not look less like Bells Beach. And to think I trusted you. Bodhi. Where else does the WSL tour go? Bells Beach is the fourth round of the tour. after it kicked off at the famous Hawaiian Pipeline in January. before moving literally a couple of kilometres down the sand to Sunset in February. then heading all the way over to Peniche in Portugal. After Bells they head to Margaret River in Western Australia. then the Indonesian reef break G Land. before Trestles in California. Saquarema in Brazil. Jeffreys Bay in South Africa (the place Mick Fanning punched a shark). the spectacular Teahupo'o in Tahiti. and finishing with an as yet undecided finals spot in September. How does the WSL championship work? The best 36 men and 18 women in the world start off battling it out. before being reduced to 24 men and 12 women at the middle of the season. The top five men and women at the end of the season then compete in the finals in September. Gabriel Medina and Carrissa Moore were the champions in 2021. As for who's going to win it this year. Mick Fanning has come out of retirement and already claimed a massive scalp. We don't want to say he's a certainty. but you wouldn't want to be a shark or an opposition surfer right now because Mick has his punchy face on. On the women's side. Sally Fitzgibbons. Steph Gilmore. and Tyler Wright all keep on keeping on. and are every chance to take the top spot again. Hang ten and stay gnarly my dudes.
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