Coolangatta Gold champion Ali Day makes shock retirement call

The Coolangatta Gold’s most dominant athlete ever has made a shock retirement call amid revelations of a secret battle with injury.

Ali Day’s quest to win a 10th Coolangatta Gold title could be his last with the surf ironman champion signalling his intention to retire from the sport after next summer.

Fresh from winning a record ninth Gold at the weekend, the 33-year-old said he currently planned to feature in the endurance race next year before hanging up the togs following the 2024/25 Nutri-Grain Ironman Series and 2025 Australian surf lifesaving titles.

“This is my second last season I imagine … it would be pretty special to win (the Gold a 10th time) and that be my last one,” Day said.

Surf ironman Ali Day. Picture: Supplied.

“Who knows I might get to that point in my career and think I want to keep going.”

Day’s thoughts on his future were thrust into the forefront of his mind this week as he awaited the results of scans on his calf.

The Surfers Paradise lifesaver revealed he believed he had done serious damage to the calf during the Gold.

An injury to the calf could have interrupted Day’s training for months leading into the Nutri-Grain Series and hindered his ability to compete for the title.

It happened last year to Day who went into the opening two rounds of the series underdone, got some momentum and then missed the final two rounds due to illness.

“During the race (last weekend) my left calf went on me a bit,” Day said.

“It completely restricted and I thought I had done something pretty serious to it. I spent a lot of time thinking about the future.

“Thankfully it came back as a grade one strain so it is as good as you could ask for, because when you are 33 and you are not doing the running you need to for transitions, it just gases you in the series.”

EARLIER

A huge shake up is on the cards for the 40th running of the Coolangatta Gold surf race in 2024, with secret talks being held between a surf life saving legend and organisers about holding it over the original course.

It’s been over a decade since the Gold was run down the bulk of Gold Coast’s coastline, with recent editions placing all transitions at Coolangatta Beach.

But it’s understood surf legend Trevor Hendy has been in discussions with Surf Life Saving Australia about using the event’s anniversary, along with Surfer Paradise SLSC’s 100th anniversary, to restore the racing format that made it so famous.

Matt Bevilacqua, who won the event in 2019, said the old course is the true Coolangatta Gold.

“It’s a true test of endurance but also of skill, navigating the break at different stages of the iconic Gold Coast,” Bevilacqua said.

“But a main highlight for all who complete this iconic course from Surfers to Coolangatta and back is travelling the final beach stretch from Burleigh to Surfers.

“In front of all the surf clubs and their nippers supporting on the Sunday morning.

“The old course is normally always impacted by wind and swell and the new course is almost always protected.

Matt Bevilacqua during the 2023 Coolangatta Gold. Picture: Supplied

“It makes for an exciting race with different surf athletes using their skills at different moments to create a lot of position changes through the event, unlike recently.”

The old course, which was changed to the new course more than 10 years ago, athletes would begin with a 23km ski from Coolangatta to Broadbeach, turn back and head into Miami Beach.

From there, competitors would run 2.1km south towards Burleigh, then swim out and back for 3.5km before jumping onto the board for 6.1kms south to Currumbin.

At the end of the board at Currumbin, athletes would then run again, this time for 7.1kms into Coolangatta for the finish.

While in the last two years, the course has been competitors would enter and exit the water at Coolangatta and run up past Bilinga and back down to the finish line.

Bevilacqua won the event on the old course in 2019, and has since finished second in the last two runnings of the Coolangatta Gold and third in 2021.

Ali Day took out first in the 2023 running, claiming his ninth title and will look to make it 10 from 10 attempts while Bevilacqua will look to claim his second title of the event when it returns for the 40th running in October 2024.

Coolangatta Gold 2023 winner Ali Day high fives fans on the way to the finish line to claim his ninth title. Picture: Supplied

The original event started as a ski from Surfers Paradise to Coolangatta, then run a short distance to get into the water to swim to Bilinga then you run from Bilinga to Currumbin then board paddle to Burleigh and then to finish to run from Burleigh to all the way through to Surfers Paradise.

Day said it will change the dynamic of the race if they went back to the original course.

“I have only ever raced the long course down at Coolangatta, so in a way I have never won a proper one (Coolangatta Gold),” Day said.

“I feel like it will be a lot harder but it will be a really good challenge and its bloody exciting if they can pull it off.

“I have handled for it, I have watched it but I have never done the original course.

“I watched Caine Eckstein win his last race (in 2011) and that was the year I believe it changed.”

It would make the perfect race to have it back at Surfers Paradise, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary, along side the Coolangatta Gold’s 40th.

Ironwoman champion Courtney Hancock supports the potential major change for the Coolangatta Gold. Pics Adam Head

The women’s 2021 winner Courtney Hancock said how cool would it be to go back to it.

“I know my generation, when we heard the Coolangatta Gold, that was the course that always came to mind,” Hancock said.

“Unfortunately I wasn’t able to race it because I was part of the era when the girls only did the short course.

“We went from Coolangatta to Surfers, so only one way but like a half way course.”