Adding longboarding, an event that probably warrants Olympic inclusion, is going to be tough. Photo: ISA
Los Angeles seemed like the perfect city to add more Olympic surfing events and surfers. But despite LA launching its Olympic bid with surfboard-shaped lapel pins and beachy branding, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) declined proposals to include longboarding and more shortboard surfers. And after hearing the IOC’s reasoning, surfing never stood much of a chance.
In the press conference announcing LA’s finalized sports program, the IOC made it clear that it was holding firm to its 10,500 athlete limit. There were 40 slots made available by axing breaking (break dancing) and reducing modern pentathlon’s quota by eight. But 24 of the 31 Olympic sports swarmed these openings like vultures, requesting a total of 772 quotas. Ultimately, three-on-three basketball and sport climbing shared the 40-athlete prize.
Despite having just 48 athletes – second-fewest in the Olympics – surfing faces uphill odds at expanding. The ocean’s unpredictability and the slow, heat-based format make it relatively tough to add more quotas within the fixed 10,500 athlete cap.
Surfing debuted at Tokyo 2020 with 40 surfers – 20 men and 20 women – an awkward number that forced several four and five-person heats. For Paris 2024, the IOC bumped it to 24 surfers per gender for a clean bracket. For LA 2028, the IOC denied a request for 32 surfers per gender, so it will remain at 24.
Surf contests require each heat to run independently of one another, which makes it hard to add athletes incrementally to a bracket. It’s a challenge shared with other individual bracket sports like fencing, tennis, table tennis, and boxing. In contrast, surfing’s urban counterpart, skateboarding, uses a “run” format that compares athletes against one another across a round – ideal for absorbing extra quotas without disruption.
So, assuming that the IOC wants to stick to its 10,500 athlete quota for Brisbane 2032, what avenues could surfing take to add more athletes and/or a new discipline? As the system works now, I see three options.
Host city additions
The host city could propose more surfing disciplines. Since Tokyo 2020, the IOC has created flexibility for the Olympic host to add new sports to the program. Tokyo 2020 added surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing, baseball/softball, and karate. Paris 2024 added breaking. The IOC allowed LA 2028 to add five new sports beyond the 10,500 athlete limit – baseball/softball, lacrosse, flag football, cricket, and squash – provided that LA covered the costs.
Brisbane 2032 could similarly say that it wants more surfing because of its cultural significance in Australia and work out a way to get longboarding on the program. But first Brisbane organizers will have to figure out what to do with all these additional sports and athletes that LA brought on board.
Wave pools
Secondly, a wave pool would make it easier to add more athletes. I am on record saying the Olympics should not be in a wave pool (at least as the technology exists today). But it would undeniably solve some of the logistical problems the sport faces. Surfing could follow more of a “run” format like skateboarding, making it less important to have a “round” number of athletes for a bracket, greatly reducing the amount of hours needed for competition, and giving the broadcast partners a predictable schedule for television.
If longboarding had been added to LA 2028, it would have required three additional days of surfing, another wrench thrown into the existing complications of scheduling the Olympic surfing event and TV programming around the forecast of a shared 10-day window.
The tradeoff of a pool would be keeping fans equally engaged. So far, the excitement of ocean surfing has proved to be a successful formula for the Olympics. The IOC has already said in the past that it doesn’t want to build a pool, and it would certainly risk the momentum surfing has gained through its first two editions. Plus, the other issue with a “run” format is that variable wind conditions can create an uneven playing field across a round.
Take from existing sports
Lastly, surfing could garner more quota slots the same way that basketball and sport climbing just did: taking them away from other sports. Prying slots away from Olympic federations is a sticky political mess, but not impossible. Surfing is on the rise, while other sports (cough, cough modern pentathlon) are on the decline. The quota balance should naturally shift towards more popular sports over time.
Despite the IOC’s 10,500 athlete cap, there are paths forward to add more surfers to the Olympics. The most sure-fire way would be to force the IOC’s hand through popularity: TV viewership, social media engagement, and ticket sales. If surfing in LA 2028 is a hit, the IOC may need to continue reallocating more quotas to its youth-driven sports like surfing.
