Australia’s eight-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore will return to the World Surf League’s Championship Tour (CT) next year after being awarded a season wildcard.<\/p>\n
Gilmore’s return comes after she stepped away from the tour in 2024, two years after winning her most recent world title.<\/p>\n
Her 2022 triumph gave her a record eighth world championship.<\/p>\n
“The last few years, I’ve enjoyed time off to do some exploration and other things,” Gilmore said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“But I’m looking forward to heading back to the CT in 2026 and seeing how I compete against the young talent on the tour.<\/p>\n
“I’m mostly excited just to see how I go in these challenges again.<\/p>\n
“When you step away from competing full-time, you can really switch off and it can be hard to get back into that headspace.<\/p>\n
“But I’m excited to feel that energy and that challenge again.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Stephanie Gilmore won an eighth world championship in 2022. (Supplied: World Surf League)<\/p>\n
Gilmore, 37, will make her competitive return at next April’s Bells Beach Pro in Victoria, which is the first CT event of the season.<\/p>\n
The Murwillumbah-born surfer won the first of four consecutive world titles as a 19-year-old in 2007, before adding victories in 2012, 2014, 2018 and 2022.<\/p>\n
Gilmore has won 34 CT events, second only to Kelly Slater across the men’s and women’s tours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s eight-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore will return to the World Surf League’s Championship Tour (CT) next year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[10968,64,63,168656,55138,15482,117278,85,168655,24490,2753,168657,6339],"class_list":["post-293492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-10968","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-championship-tour","tag-comeback","tag-ct","tag-kelly-slater","tag-sports","tag-stephanie-gilmore","tag-surfing","tag-world-champion","tag-world-surf-league","tag-wsl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}