If Julian Wilson’s departure from the WSL world tour three years ago at the height of Covid cancellations and the gruelling isolation of hotel quarantine after travel was entirely predictable, his announcement last month that he will seek to return to it in 2025 came as a surprise to many, including this writer.
Not that the kid from Coolum couldn’t cut it in today’s championship tour pack, even at 36 and with nearly four years out of a coloured jersey, but it’s likely to be a hard road for the one-time ASP world junior champion, 2018 world number two, and one of Australia’s top three pros on tour over a decade, finishing top 10 in seven of those seasons. Julian has always been an exciter, since breaking out of the longboard ranks as a pre-teen and developing a bag of trademark cutting edge moves as one of Quiksilver’s precociously brilliant “Young Guns” in the early 2000s, and in his best years on tour he was a beautifully precise surfer whose rail game was almost always on point but who could break the line unexpectedly to boost one of the best airs in the game. The full package, as they say.
Since 2021 I’ve seen a bit of footage here and there, most notably in last year’s short film portrait Aurora Australis (odd name) which showed Jules as a doting dad and husband, loving life at new home in Merewether and back here having fun on the points on a longboard or ripping it up on a shortie up the beach at DI, chasing roos on his dirt bike, chucking flips at the skate park … Just another bloke living the dream, but this one’s not a tradie (yet) and by all accounts when the waves are real he’s lost nothing of those dynamic moves and exquisite timing that links them.
So yeah, he’s still got what it takes. Jordy’s the same age and at the top of his game, Kelly was still relevant well into his 40s and won the Pipe Pro at 49 ¾. But, as noted earlier, it ain’t going to be easy.
In July 2021 Jules announced on his Insta account: “I’m taking a break indefinitely from the WSL world tour for my own well-being and that of my family. By no means am I calling it a retirement from professional surfing and the decision I have made is in line with what I value most in my life and that is my family. The inability to travel internationally with them now and for the foreseeable future is enough for me to take a step back and be there for my wife and children.”
Last month on the same platform he said: “This time three years ago I was sitting in a hotel quarantine room in the aftermath of my Tokyo Olympic campaign, watching my dream as a WT surfer fade away while heading home to be the best partner and dad that [I] could be during a very challenging time (mentally). I don’t regret my decision for a second and I love my wife and family to bits… The past six months I’ve had competing firmly at the forefront of my mind. It’s time for me to give it another crack. My hope is to get a WSL wildcard for the 2025 challenger series.”
It’s understandable and, I think, commendable. But it’s a hard road. Unless the WSL grant him the season wildcard that Kelly Slater just surrendered (and past performance could justify that) it would get down to qualifying on the Challenger Series, perhaps spearheaded by a wildcard for Snapper Rocks (back on the CT in 2025) as an event champion.
I just hope he pulls it off. Even though I still see Jules as a tiny grom in puka shells lining up for his heat at the Noosa Festival of Surfing, rather than as a middle-aged man on the comeback trail, I can’t wait to see him trading blows with Jordy, the two tour vets who can still smash it.
Abu Dhabi tour try-out
So here we go again – poor old longboarders sent out like canaries in the coalmine.
While the WSL drip-feeds us the details of next year’s world championship tour, with full disclosure due this week after the finals at Trestles, what we already know is that the Snapper Rocks/Superbank pro is back as a WCT as it should be, and that Abu Dhabi will host one at the recently-completed, multi-million dollar, Kelly Slater-designed, downtown wave pool called Surf Abu Dhabi.
This could be a disaster of monumental proportions, given the lacklustre presentation of previous tour events at the original Slater Surf Ranch at Lemoore, California, and given that Abu Dhabi is, well, a bunch of skyscrapers at the edge of the desert where it’s rather hard to get a drink. But wait – let’s send in the longboarders and see how we go.
And that’s what is happening at the end of this month, folks, with Abu Dhabi announced as the third (and hastily added at the last minute) stop on the WLT, on which Californian and honorary Aussie Taylor Jensen appears to have a stranglehold. Keep up the fluids, Tay!
And if it all goes to hell in a heatwave, well, they were only mal riders!
