The beautiful surfing of Honolua Blomfield was on display all week. Photo: Pablo Jimenez//ISA
It was a clean sweep of gold medals for Hawaii in “Surf City” El Salvador. Honolua Blomfield and Kai Sallas took the respective women’s and men’s gold medals at the ISA World Longboard Championship, which, in turn, awarded the Hawaiians the team gold medal as well.
The ISA, and longboarders alike, are hoping that the action was an Olympic preview. The ongoing storyline throughout the competition was the ISA’s application to include longboarding in the LA 2028 Olympics alongside shortboarding, which already has been confirmed. Apparently, we’ll know if that comes to fruition in the first quarter of 2025 as the IOC and LA 2028 mull over options.
The event could not have played out any better if any Olympic decision makers were tuning in. The surfing was elite and the waves didn’t let up. There was a record number of athletes (129), nations (39), and level of gender equality (48 percent women participants). Check. Check. Check. The big wigs in Lausanne and LA must be intrigued. And as with shortboarding, the easy-on-the-eyes, tanned longboarders hanging ten in bikinis and boardshorts under the tropical sun certainly bodes well for their efforts to continue making the Games cooler, more relevant, and more appealing to youth.
“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be competing, but it would be a dream of mine to see the younger generation competing in the Olympics,” said Sallas after his second ISA victory. “That was something I wished for my whole career. If anyone is out there listening to this, please get longboarding into the Olympics. It would be an amazing sport to have.”
The men’s final took to the water first and was a classic shootout of noseriding and stylish railwork between Sallas, Brazil’s Rodrigo Sphaier, France’s Edouard Delpero, and Japan’s Taka Inoue. Sallas opened up the heat with impressively long hang fives interspersed with hang tens to earn a 9.5, the highest men’s wave score of the entire event. When it looked like Sallas was going to run away with it, every single competitor followed with an excellent-range ride of their own.
But when the dust settled, Sallas’ 17.33 heat total squeaked by the silver medalist Inoue, who tallied a 17.10. Sphaier took the bronze with 16.20 points and Delpero the copper with 15.47.
Following the blueprint of Sallas, in the women’s final Blomfield built early separation from the rest of the pack. USA’s Rachael Tilly’s final wave of 6.9, which coupled with a score of 8.17, nearly put her over the top in the dying moments of the heat. However, Blomfield raised the bar with a heat-high 8.43 score of her own in the last set of the final and surpassed Tilly’s score to win with 16.5 points. Tilly’s 15.07 earned the silver, while Japan’s Naomi Taoka took bronze and France’s Zoe Grospiron ended with copper.
“I am so proud (to be a Hawaiian),” said Blomfield, the three-time WSL longboard champion, after the win. “It would be so insane to get longboarding in the Olympics. I think that is everybody’s goal in their sport: the Olympics.”
Behind Hawaii’s team gold was Japan with silver, France with bronze, and Brazil with copper.
And it can’t go without saying: How about El Salvador?
Once again, El Salvador played host to a major international surfing event. The country has revived itself from an abyss of surfing (or general) relevance and, in a matter of six years, is now undoubtedly one of the key players on the exclusive list of countries around the world that can, and are willing to, host top-level surf events.
There are few that combine power and finesse like Kai Sallas, who proved that again in El Salvador. Photo: Pablo Jimenez//ISA
El Sunzal was pumping all week and on final’s day showed its classic, clean walls. You couldn’t have asked for anything else. During the finals, the Hawaiian pro longboarder and web announcer, Megan Godinez, called it (perhaps a bit caught up in the moment?) the best point break in the world. While there may have been a bit of hyperbole in that claim, there is no denying how consistently good El Sunzal was all week for logging. It was a machine that didn’t stop. Wingnut, also a web announcer, was raving and drooling over the wave all week in his commentary.
Hosting top-tier surf events (in addition to Bitcoin and curbing gang activity) is part of newly-reelected President Nayib Bukele’s masterplan to make El Salvador a relevant tourist destination. In his first term, Bukele managed to woo the WSL and ISA to give him the Championship Tour and Olympic qualifiers. Now he has a second presidential term to build on that success.
Ten years ago, who would have thought: El Salvador, a global surfing superpower?
If longboarders get the good news that their discipline is to be included in the LA 2028 Olympics, this moment will surely be looked back upon as one of the key milestones that boosted the momentum. Ironically, if the discipline is included, that will be the end of team Hawaii, as Sallas, Blomfield, and their fellow Hawaiians, will have to surf for team USA. But they’ll cross that bridge when they get there.
