With the World Surf League’s Championship Tour returning to our screens this week courtesy of the Newcastle Cup, surfing in Newcastle has received more attention than perhaps ever before. Typically in the surfing world, the town is mostly known for being the birthplace of Mark Richards, but there’s more to Newy than just that. Though this is the first year that it’s on the tour, an event has actually been held here every year since 1985, and names like Kelly Slater, Steph Gilmore and Tom Curran can all be found on the winners’ list. Those three, however, have all only won it once, and in the spirit of the week we thought we’d take a look at the most successful surfers in this event’s history.
Mick Fanning
One of Australia’s favourite sons, Mick Fanning was one of few surfers capable of semi-matching it with Kelly Slater in the earlier parts of this century. The career highlights of the man from Tweed Heads obviously come in the form of his three world titles, but he also enjoyed an extremely successful run in Newcastle. He won it in 2000, 2002 and 2005, in doing so becoming the only male surfer in the history of the competition to win it on three occasions. It’s a mantle he still holds today – three men have won it twice, though incredibly they all came prior to Mick’s first win, and since then a new champion has been crowned each and every year.
Pam Burridge
On the women’s side of things, the competition known as Surfest has seen a couple more surfers monopolise the cup. Pam Burridge was the first to do so. Burridge, of course, was a pioneer of women’s surfing in Australia, blazing a trail for many who came after her and winning a world title along the way in 1990. She surfed competitively for over two decades – albeit with a hiatus of a couple of years in the middle – and was the first to win in Newcastle in consecutive years, winning in 1993 and 1994. Prior to that she had already won the event back in 1988 as well, just the fourth year in which the competition had run, giving her a total equal to what anyone has achieved since.
Rebecca Woods
Rebecca Woods might not be a name held in the same sort of esteem as the above two, but as far as surfing in Newcastle goes she might as well be royalty. Woods showed just how beneficial it can be to know the wave around here – a major reason why Ryan Callinan is expected to perform so well over the next week – having grown up less than 100 kilometres south of Newcastle in a place called Copacobana (not the same Copacobana as in the song you’re thinking of). She burst onto the scene in Newcastle, winning Surfest in 2003 at just 18 years of age. The next year, she took it out again, then after taking a temporary pause from all that winning in 2005, made it three in four years in 2006. At that stage she was still just 21 years old, but that was all she wrote in terms of victory in Newcastle, leaving her tied on top as the most successful surfer in this contest’s history.
Sally Fitzgibbons
The most recent member of this quarter to dominate Surfest, Fitzgibbons has been one of only two surfers in both the men’s and women’s competition to salute at Newcastle on multiple occasions in the last 15 years. These wins have been nicely spaced out: the first came in 2013, a year in which she finished third in the world title race. The next came three years later in 2016, while the third and (so far) final came another three years later, in 2019. Fitzgibbons is the only person with three wins at Newcastle who is still surfing professionally, and though the trend of winning every three years here that she has created would suggest she isn’t due another victory until 2022, she is regarded as a good chance of being in the last few at the Newcastle Cup over the next week.
The four aforementioned surfers stand alone as the only surfers to ever win a professional event in Newcastle on three occasions, but unsurprisingly there are a number who sit just below them. It seemed almost a prerequisite on the men’s side early on in the event’s existence to win it twice: Mark Occhilupo won the second ever pro tournament here in 1986 then won again in 1998; Tom Carrol won in 1987 and 1989; while Damian Hardman took it out in 1988 before winning it again four years later.
For the women, Neridah Falconer took it out back-to-back in 1995 and ’96, while more recently Coco Ho has won it in 2011 and 2018 – she is the other surfer mentioned with Sally Fitzgibbons as one of two to win it multiple times in the past decade and a half.
Heading into this year’s CT event, there are a host of past winners looking to join that list – or in Fitzgibbons’ case, looking to become the first ever surfer to win here four times. Australian trio Julian Wilson, Mikey Wright and Matt Wilkinson have all won here in the past, as have Steph Gilmore, Malia Manuel, Johanne Defay and Bronte Macauley. Of course, this year’s event holds more importance than any past tournaments held here given Championship Tour points are on the line, and all of those surfers and a whole lot more will be eager to etch their name into Newcastle surfing history.
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