Over the course of this week, we’ll be regularly updating you with all the latest news and rankings as 240 men and women surfers, representing 55 countries, compete for medals and Olympic qualification at the 2019 ISA World Surfing Games at Kisakihama Beach in Miyazaki, Japan.
September 11 Update
Compared to the last few days of furious competition, Wednesday at the ISA World Surfing Games at Kisakihama Beach in Miyazaki, Japan, was a relaxing one. Today was pretty much all about fun: while the Men’s rounds continued, the focus of the day was on the ISA Aloha Team Relay event. Here’s what went down:
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The Aloha Cup is a team relay event that features two men and two women from the top eight teams at the 2018 ISA World Surfing Games in Tahara, Japan. There are two semi-finals and a final where each surfer catches two waves in their leg of the relay before tagging in the next team-mate. The total of all surfers’ waves becomes the final team score.
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Team Australia, including Owen Wright, Nikki Van Dijk, Sally Fitzgibbons, and Ryan Callinan, take Gold over South Africa (Silver), USA (Bronze), and Japan (Copper).
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Ryan Callinan’s 8.5 in the semi-finals was the highest score of the Aloha Cup, and it helped push Australia to Gold. Team Australia’s overall points total was 38.19. “It’s a great feeling to be a part of a team,” said Callinan. “It’s so different for our sport to be here representing Team Australia and to get a win is amazing.”
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The ISA’s newest member nation, American Samoa, made its debut in the ISA World Surfing Games, thanks to its sole representative, 16-year-old Liam Wilson. “There are not a lot of surfers in American Samoa, so I hope that I can make the sport more well-known,” Wilson said. “I hope I can show the kids that there is another sport to practice other than football or rugby.”
September 10 Update
As dawn broke over Miyazaki, Japan, on Tuesday, it was clear that it was going to be a big day of competition at the ISA World Surfing Games. Here are the day’s highlights:
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Peru’s Sofia Mulanovich, who is a past ISA World Surfing Games Champion, once again took gold over Brazil’s Silvana Lima (Silver), South Africa’s Bianca Buitendag (Bronze), and USA’s Carissa Moore (Copper). “This final was a validation of the truly universal competitive landscape of our sport,” ISA President Fernando Aguerre said after the Women’s final.
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Sofia is one of the only three surfers with two ISA World Surfing Games Gold medals. Puerto Rico’s Tia Blanco and Australia’s Sally Fitzgibbons are the other two surfers.
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Team Brazil is now leading in the rankings, over the World Surfing Games’s other 54 participating countries.
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The Men’s competition has commenced, with Vasco Ribeiro (Portugal) scoring the highest heat total of the day (15.27).
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Also winning their Round 1 heats were Julian Wilson, Kolohe Andino, Michel Bourez, Kehu Butler, Cristobal de Col, Jordy Smith, and Kanoa Igarashi.
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11-time World Champion Kelly Slater also won his Round 1 heat. “I haven’t competed for Team USA since the 1990 edition of the World Surfing Games, also in Japan,” Slater said. “It’s nice to be here because it brings back great memories.”
September 9 Update
The event kicked-off on Saturday, September 7 with an ISA tradition, the Parade of Nations, which involved the 240 WSG athletes and their coaches marching through Miyazaki, waving the flags of their countries. To cap off the ceremony, two surfers from each country poured sand from their local beaches into a single container, symbolising the peaceful gathering of all 55 nations through surfing.
ISA President Fernando Aguerre, who for over two decades has dreamed of getting surfing into the Olympics, poured the last grains of sand into the container. “In 1996, I had a dream that the best surfers in the world would compete on their national teams, such as in football, rugby and tennis,” Aguerre said. “It has finally come true today in Miyazaki.”
Then it was time to kick-off the Women’s competition in the small but contestable beachbreak waves of Miyazaki’s Kisakihama Beach. Miyazaki is the capital city of the Miyazaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, about 900km south-west of Tokyo.
Not surprisingly, the United States’s Caroline Marks, who won the ISA World Junior Championship in 2016, dominated the day, earning the highest single wave score and heat total of the day. Alongside Marks was her fellow WSL competitor and friend, Carissa Moore, who advanced through her first heat, but lost her second round heat, which relegated her to the repechage round.
By Monday, conditions had improved, as a fresh typhoon swell began pouring across the sandbars of Kisakihama. Moore stayed alive, along with USA’s Courtney Conlogue, who also had fallen into the dreaded repechage round. Both Moore and Conlogue will now face fellow WSL stars Stephanie Gilmore, Sally Fitzgibbons, Nikki Van Dijk, Brisa Hennessy and Marks in the next round, along with Israel’s Anat Lelior.
South Africa, Japan, Israel and New Zealand all saw some of their athletes take the closest steps to becoming official Olympians. For South Africa, it’s Bianca Buitendag,for Japan Shino Matsuda.Israel has Anat Lelior and for New Zealand it’s Ella Williams. Though they’re close, their qualification won’t be official until the 2020 ISA World Surfing Games, next May. The only scenario in which Buitendag, Matsuda, Williams and Lelior wouldn’t qualify is if two compatriots of the same gender qualify ahead of them at the 2020 World Surfing Games.
Other big names in Women’s surfing, like Brazil’s Silvana Lima and Tatiana Weston-Webb and Peru’s Sofia Mulanovich, have all advanced to the Open Women Main Event Final, which will go down tomorrow, September 10.
Also beginning tomorrow will be the first rounds of the Men’s competition.
Stay tuned to ISASurf.org, where you can watch the competition live, and check back here regularly for news on our Red Bull athletes, as they work their ways closer to being a part of the 20 men and 20 women who’ll represent the sport of surfing for the very first time in Tokyo.
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