Team Brazil took home at the 2019 iteration of the ISA World Surfing Games. Photo: ISA/Ben Reed
With the 2019 ISA World Surfing Games presented by Vans dusted, eight surfers have received provisional qualification status for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics making it all but certain they’ll be competing for gold at Tsurigasaki Beach next summer. That brings the number of provisionally qualified surfers to ten if you count the two surfers who captured gold at the 2019 Pan Am Games in Peru earlier this year. But let’s back up.
For all the pomp and circumstance of the ISA World Surfing Games, for highly ranked Championship Tour surfers participating, their only obligation to remain in good standing was to show up and compete. That is, their result had zero bearing on their qualification dreams. Which means despite winning gold after surfing the dying minutes of his first heat in jorts, Italo Ferreira could ultimately lose out to Filipe Toledo and Gabriel Medina, though we sincerely hope that doesn’t happen. More on that later.
Going into the event, the pressure was always going to be on top-performing surfers from the continents of Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. When the ISA and the International Olympic Committee hammered out the qualification scheme, it was decided that two slots per continent (one male, one female) would be decided at the 2019 World Surfing Games, meaning a total of eight available slots.
For someone like 36-year-old Sofia Mulanovich, who won gold in the women’s event this year, that there are no slots allocated for the Americas at the ISA Worlds is a bit of a bummer. Instead of provisionally qualifying, the honor goes instead to two fellow Peruvians who won gold at the Pan Am Games earlier this year, Lucca Mesinas and Daniella Rosas.
So, for lower-ranked Championship Tour surfers from countries without significant representation on tour (think the United States, Australia, Brazil, and France), the objective going into the 2019 ISA World Games was this – make it as far as possible in the event. In the end, the eight surfers that provisionally qualified are as follows:
Men:
Shun Murakami (Japan/Asia)
Ramzi Boukhiam (Morrocco/Africa)
Billy Stairmand (New Zealand/Oceania)
Frederico Morais (Portugal/Europe)
Women:
Shino Matsuda (Japan/Asia)
Anat Lelior (Israel/Europe*)
Bianca Buitendag (South Africa/Africa)
Ella Williams (New Zealand/Oceania)
By year’s end, 18 more surfers will be added to the Olympic roster from the WSL men’s and women’s Championship Tours (10 men and 8 women), bringing the total to 28. Ten more will be decided at the 2020 ISA World Games, date and location TBD, making 38. And the final two slots are so-called host nation slots reserved for surfers from Japan, making the grand total of 40 surfers. But therein lies another caveat. Currently ranked 7th, Kanoa Igarashi will likely earn a spot for Japan meaning the host nation slot guaranteed to Japan will be reallocated to the highest ranked eligible surfer.
So far, the growing list of surfing Olympians is comprised of a couple of Qualifying Series surfers, lower-tier CTers, and a few names you’ve likely never heard before. This is very much what we thought would be the case all along – a lot like the composition of the 2019 ISA World Surfing Games. Commit them to memory because they could be the ones taking down Kelly Slater or Stephanie Gilmore in a major upset next summer. Stranger things have happened.
*For the purposes of the ISA World Games and the Olympics, Israel counts as a European nation.
