Photo: Erin Brooks // Instagram
Erin Brooks has been on a long and twisting road in her quest to represent Canada in the 2024 Paris Olympics, but today it finally came to an end. After fighting for months to secure citizenship, her Olympic hopes have been dashed by an elimination in the third round of repechage at the ISA World Surfing Games in Puerto Rico.
Brooks was long considered Canada’s best shot at an Olympic surfing medal. The 16-year-old wunderkind competed for years under the maple leaf flag at international surfing events, including when she placed second at the 2023 ISA World Surfing Games in El Salvador. However, that all came into question when the world found out that she was, in fact, not Canadian.
In June, CBC discovered that Brooks’ ability to compete as a Canadian was the result of exemptions granted to her based on a pending citizenship application. Though Erin was born in Texas and grew up in Hawaii, she had applied based on the fact that her father, Jeff, is an American-born Canadian citizen.
Shortly after the story was published, the ISA reevaluated Brooks’ citizenship status and decided to immediately suspend her eligibility to compete for Canada. In October, Brooks’ citizenship application was officially denied by the Canadian government, seemingly putting the issue to bed. However, Brooks’s family immediately appealed the ruling, aided by advocates in the Canadian parliament. The decision was eventually reversed by the Canadian Immigration Minister, as a result of a December ruling by Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice that it was unconstitutional for Canada to deny automatic citizenship to the children of foreign-born Canadians who grew up abroad. Brooks was sworn in as a Canadian citizen in January.
Thus, Brooks went into the 2024 ISA World Surfing Games as a newly-minted Canadian citizen, with Paris back in her sights. She got off to a strong start, placing second in her round one heat. However, the trouble started in round two, when she was bumped into third place by France’s Vahine Fierro and South Africa’s Sarah Baum, sending her to repechage.
Though she was now in danger of elimination, we had seen her triumph from similar situations in the past. At the 2023 ISA games, Brooks was also relegated to repechage, but then managed to fight all the way back to the final heat. With a first place finish in her first repechage round, it seemed like she might be able to pull it off again.
Then, in her second repechage heat, Brooks once again placed third, behind Janire Gonzalez-Etxabarri of Spain and Great Britain’s Alys Barton. With that, she was out of the competition and had missed her last chance at qualification for Paris, as Dom Domic, executive director of Surf Canada, confirmed in an e-mail to Sportsnet.
With Erin officially out, Canada’s Olympic surfing hopes rest squarely on the shoulders of Sanoa Dempfle-Olin. After a second-place finish at the 2023 Pan-American games in Santiago, Chile, Olin became the first Canadian to ever earn an Olympic surfing qualification. Though Olin’s path to Tahiti may not have been as dramatic as the Brooks saga, the Tofino, British Columbia, native’s Canadian-ness has never been in question.
