It’s not often there’s a large sporting event right on your doorstep. But for various reasons last week was my first chance to attend the World Surf League on Bells Beach, about an hour’s drive southwest of Melbourne, and it didn’t disappoint.
Bells Beach is home to the world’s longest continuously running pro surfing competition, starting back in 1962. It’s the first stop on the 2026 World Surf League tour. It was also the setting for the closing scene in the cult surfing movie Point Break.
The World Surf League is the tour that decides the men’s and women’s world champions in surfing and has been staged in various iterations since 1964. These days it’s run over 12 events spread over nine months and across nine different countries – with stops including Fiji, Tahiti, Brazil and El Salvador – and climaxing in December on Oahu’s famous North Shore.
Each event takes place during an 11-day competition window, to allow for the best combination of tides and swell for optimal surfing. I got to catch the first few days of action before heading back home to Ireland this week.
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Bells Beach is just 2km down along the Great Ocean Road from the town of Jan Juc, which is where I stay in Australia now when back there for their summer.
So when the announcement came for the opening round heats, I was able to hop on the bike and spin down to catch a close-up view of the action. The bike is the best mode of transport, as traffic can be chaotic on that small patch of the coast, with the car park also backing on to a field of kangaroos.
There are 36 men and 24 women on tour. At first glance it might have looked like there were two Irish surfers this year, in Liam O’Brien and Connor O’Leary. Only in name, however. I got chatting briefly with O’Brien, who surfs for Australia, and although there was some Irish connection way back, he wasn’t too sure of exactly when or where.
O’Leary was also born in Australia, and has an Irish-Australian father, and Japanese mother, who was also a champion surfer in her day. O’Leary previously represented Australia, but switched to Japan in 2023, in time for the 2024 Olympics.
It’s clear from watching the World Surf League that this is a big deal in the surfing world, even if it operates far off the radar of mainstream sports. It’s obviously an expensive sport too, even to get started in, and most surfers rely heavily on sponsorship to allow them to travel the world.
They can still be quickly knocked out in the early rounds if drawn on one of the less favourable or unpredictable surfing days. Only by attending do you also get the full connection and understanding of a sport that is decided by judges looking at specific skills, which may not be so obvious to the inexperienced observer such as myself.
The waves are also different every day, which means the organisers must make a call on starting when there is a greater chance for the surfers to have a fair competition.
O’Brien was up among the first qualifiers, against Mateus Herdy from Brazil, but the conditions were tricky and probably not a fair chance to see the true ability of these surfers. Herdy took his opportunity and probably got lucky to edge out O’Brien and progress to the next round.
Yago Dora from Brazil and Molly Picklum from Australia are the defending champions, with this year’s competition reverting to a points system, determined by a surfer’s best nine of 12 results.
Each pair of surfers get 30 minutes in the water to catch as many waves as they can, and are scored on speed, turns and aerial movements. So from the start it’s a winner-takes-all, then on to the next round. There are also jet skis on the sidelines, waiting to ferry the surfers back out to where the waves are breaking, so they’ve more opportunities to catch the bigger waves and not waste time having to paddle back out on their own.
Still, even for the spectators, it can be a trying time. You never want to be too far away or miss the next call of the ocean, watching up close the skills and strength of these high-performing athletes taking on the some of the world’s biggest and best waves.
When the competition is on hold, the ticket office closes and the Bells Beach sponsor village is opened up to all, where the surfers and spectators happily mix. It’s also where you get a real understanding of some of the difficulties faced by those entering such a niche sport that doesn’t always get the mainstream coverage it deserves.
It’s as much a mental as it is physical game at this level, when there can be so many warm-ups and false starts.
For a country with such a strong surfing reputation, it’s a pity there isn’t some real Irish interest in the World Surf League. If only the water wasn’t so cold, maybe some day a tour date might also be added on our side of the world too.
For now, the only European date on the World Surf League tour is in Peniche, in Portugal, at the end of October. I can hear Mullaghmore Head calling.
