Rip Curl Presents: Rip Curl Pro, Through the Decades

The Rip Curl Pro is surfing's longest running event. 2020 is it's 59th year running... it's 59th! Nearly six decades of professional surfing's finest have run up and down those stairs, have sat in the Bells Bowl as corduroy lines pulsed around the corner from Rincon, have turned back to stare at the rust-coloured cliffs towering above the beach. Bells Beach is a special place, and the Rip Curl Pro holds an extremely special space in the history of surfing.

In 2020, for the first time since it first ran 59 years ago, the Rip Curl Pro isn't going to be held over Easter Weekend. The Bell is not going to be rung this Easter.

That’s a blow for surfing. But, in the context of what’s going on in the world right now, it’s easily accepted.

However, it doesn’t mean that we can’t celebrate the event that means so much to so many of us… so much to surfing. Today we look back and take a trip down memory lane, into the hallowed cliff walls of the Bells Bowl, and all of the decades of professional surfers that have surfed their way through Easter to the podium at the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach.

It’s been a wild 59 years… and here’s to many more!