Do you remember this moment? You must.
Which potential Olympic roster boasts the star power worthy of the “Dream Team” moniker? Photo: WSL / Tonny Heff
I’m going to date myself by recalling the year 1992. Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit had been released exactly a year prior and was then the biggest song and music video on the planet. Wayne’s World had just come out in theaters. And a then-20-year-old Kelly Slater was about to win his first world title.
I was a little kid at the time but I vividly remember one thing far grander and shining much brighter than Kelly in the spotlight of the sports world: The Dream Team. Magic, Jordan, Barkley, and Bird were just a few of the athletes you still only need one name to identify — even if you don’t care about basketball — and they were all wearing the same jersey and flying the same flag. It was unprecedented and historic.
The original and really only true Dream Team played just six meaningful games, all during the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, beating their opponents by a combined 309 points. And they accomplished this after being preemptively dubbed the greatest sports team ever. You could argue today they still are, and with 27 years of hindsight at our disposal, we can even argue their mere existence catapulted basketball into becoming a true global sport today — all because the world was really, really fascinated with the idea of watching a super team obliterate the competition.
I bring this all up for context because the organization at the highest level of competitive surfing, the WSL, is working to accomplish the same thing: raise the profile of its sport. Be as popular as the NFL or the NBA. And surfing’s Olympic debut in 2020 will either be a step toward that or something we’ll someday look back at as another missed swing at making the sport mainstream. It’s relevant today because the world gets its first preview of that when the ISA World Surfing Games start in Miyazaki, Japan (September 7), marking the true beginning of Olympic surfing.
As the 2020 Tokyo Games’ compulsory qualification event, a handful of Championship Tour surfers will be required to compete this weekend in order to remain eligible. To be specific, any surfer invited to the ISA event has to compete if he or she wants one of their country’s two Olympics roster spots. Kelly: has to compete. Medina: has to compete. Steph Gilmore: has to compete. John John: doesn’t have to compete because he’s injured, and if another American (Slater, Seth Moniz, Conner Coffin…) doesn’t overtake him in the World Tour rankings, Florence will still be named to Team USA for the 2020 Games. Seth Moniz: doesn’t have to compete because he wasn’t invited when the ISA World Surfing Games rosters were set based on World Tour rankings in June. But if he’s one of the top-two ranked American surfers by the end of the 2019 Championship Tour season, he’ll be named to Team USA.
Confused yet? That’s fine. If you are confused, playing the now-decades-old Dream Team game is still kind of fun going into this weekend. There are a record 55 nations competing in the 2019 ISA World Surfing Games with a combined 240 surfers (103 women, 137 men) — a healthy dose of those competitors being Championship Tour athletes. And through all of that, just 20 men and 20 women in total will actually qualify, with no more than two men and two women being named to any respective nation’s roster for the 2020 Tokyo Games. Browsing through the ISA’s rosters and clicking on each flag to see who represents each nation, there are a few teams that stand out – Team USA, Team Brazil, and Team Australia are stacked.
Australia
Ryan Callinan: Current Men’s CT #11, 2016 Men’s Rookie of the Year.
Sally Fitzgibbons: Current Women’s CT #2, 11 career CT wins.
Steph Gilmore: She’s Steph Gilmore. She owns seven World Titles…
Nikki Van Dijk: six-year CT Veteran.
Julian Wilson: 2018 Men’s CT Runner-Up, Current Men’s CT #11.
Owen Wright: Current Men’s CT #8 and fresh off a Tahiti Pro win.
Brazil
Italo Ferreira: Current Men’s CT #6.
Tainá Hinckel: A 16-year-old phenom who competed in her first CT event at 14.
Silvana Lima: Honestly, one of the sport’s most resilient athletes — something we should applaud her for more often. Silvana Lima’s fallen off Tour multiple times and fought her way back. And she’s still doing it.
Gabriel Medina: Two-time world champ and a favorite to earn his third this year.
Filipe Toledo: Current owner of the men’s yellow jersey. “Best Small Wave Surfer” in the world.
Tatiana Weston-Webb: Five-year CT vet, current CT #8, and former Rookie of the Year.
USA
Kolohe Andino: Current CT #3
Conner Coffin: 2016 CT Rookie of the Year
Courtney Conlogue: Current Women’s CT #6 and two-time tour runner-up.
Caroline Marks: Was the youngest surfer to ever qualify for the CT at 15, then went on to win Rookie of the Year honors.
Carissa Moore: Three-time world champion and currently lined up for a fourth holding the women’s yellow jersey.
Kelly Slater: Never heard of the guy. May or may not be an actual GOAT…
So, which roster, if any, boasts the star power, the talent, and the name recognition to earn surfing’s version of the Dream Team moniker? And beyond that, it’s worth asking if any possible Olympic team is compelling enough to recreate for surfing what the original Dream Team did for basketball.
Editor’s Note: You can watch the 2019 ISA World Surfing Games online from September 7-15 here.
