ISA World Surfing Games 2024: Preview, schedule, top surfers competing, and how to watch the final Paris 2024 qualifier live
The world’s best surfers, including all but one of those provisionally qualified for Paris 2024, are slated to compete at the final Olympic qualifier in Puerto Rico. Fourteen individual quotas are up for grabs as well as two team quotas. Follow the action live on Olympic Channel worldwide. Here's how.
Surfing
It is down to the final qualifying event, the 2024 ISA World Surfing Games, to determine the surfers going to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and no teams are holding back.
The world’s best, including all but one of the surfers who have earned provisional quotas, are on their way to Puerto Rico, with ambitions to win world titles, clinch the final quota spots, and help their teammates make the Olympic team. You can watch the action live on Olympic Channel via Olympics.com and the official Olympics app.
More than 50 countries are scheduled to compete at the event, with the British Virgin Islands making their international surfing debut.
Six men and eight women will earn individual quotas for their National Olympic Committees (NOCs) at the competition, which is held on the Margara reef break from 23 February to 3 March, with the Olympic fates of surfing superstars, including Brazil’s Gabriel Medina, Australia’s Sally Fitzgibbons and Indonesia’s Rio Waida, set to be decided on the waves.
For those athletes who already have provisional quotas, the stakes will still be high as they try to get an extra spot for their teammates. The winning men’s and women’s teams will each get an extra, third surfer qualified for Paris 2024.
Read on to find out the key things to know about the 2024 ISA World Surfing Games, including the schedule, format, top stars, and how to watch the competition live.
ISA World Surfing Games 2024: Hosts Puerto Rico and the Margara reef break
The action of the 2024 World Surfing Games will unfurl on the north coast of Puerto Rico at Arecibo.
The country has hosted several International Surfing Association events in the past, including the 1966 and 1988 ISA World Surfing Championships and more recently, the 2022 ISA World SUP & Paddleboard Championship.
The local reef break is one of the most powerful waves near the island. Dubbed “Puerto Rico’s Pipeline”, Margara is one of the heaviest barrels in the Atlantic. Its twin breaks, El Pico and Rastrial, split right and left, but tend to favour lefts.
This choice of wave is a departure from the safer beach breaks where the ISA World Surfing Games were held in recent years. In a nod to the upcoming Olympic competition that surfers are trying to qualify for, Margara is one of the most challenging venues to host the annual event and promises to give the winners a taste of the challenge that lies ahead at the Paris 2024 competition in Tahiti.
ISA World Surfing Games 2024: From Puerto Rico to Paris 2024
Fourteen individual quotas for Paris 2024 are on the line at the competition – six for men and eight for women.
Another 28 individual quotas were allocated earlier through the 2023 ISA World Surfing Games, 2023 WSL Championship Tour, and the 2023 Pan American Games.
The top-ranked surfers who have not received provisional quotas last year will earn quotas for their NOCs in Puerto Rico.
In addition to the individual quotas, there will be two quotas available through the team competition, one for men and another for women.
The points of the different team members will be combined to determine the winning men’s and women’s teams that will then be able to take an extra, third surfer to Paris 2024. For the other NOCs, the maximum number of surfers who can compete at Paris 2024 is set at two per gender.
Japanese men and USA women won the third spots for their squads at the 2022 ISA World Surfing Games. If these teams win the competition again, the second-best ranked teams will get the extra slots instead.
Two universality places, chosen through the Olympic Games Tripartite Commission, will complete the list of 24 male and 24 female surfers due to compete at Paris 2024.
*As National Olympic Committees have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games, athletes' participation at the Paris Games depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at Paris 2024.
Click here to see the official qualification system for each sport.
ISA World Surfing Games 2024: Athletes to watch
All but one of the surfers who have received provisional quotas in 2023 are set to appear at the 2024 ISA World Surfing Games, highlighting the high level of the competition.
Brazil’s Joao Chianca qualified through the WSL Championship Tour but had a serious accident in December and will miss the event for medical reasons.
Despite his absence, Brazil's men remain a formidable force in the team competition with three-time world champion Gabriel Medina, Championship Tour top threat Yago Dora, and two-time and reigning world champion Filipe Toledo on the roster. Toledo recently announced that he would be taking a year off from the 2024 WSL Championship Tour, but remains on the startlist for the ISA World Surfing Games.
The stakes are high for Medina and Dora whose chances of going to Paris 2024 could be virtually wiped out unless Brazil can win an extra spot on the men’s squad.
Brazil’s main opponent for that men's team spot is the United States. Last season’s breakout star Griffin Colapinto and two-time world champion John John Florence already have provisional quotas and will be trying to help Barron Mamiya join them in the line-up at Teahupo’o.
Mamiya is a veritable force in his own right, coming to Puerto Rico fresh from his victory in the WSL Championship Tour opener on the home waves in Hawaii.
Fellow USA surfer Caitlin Simmers won the women’s event at the season opener at Pipeline to follow on a whirlwind rookie season that saw her qualify and finish fourth at the WSL Finals in September.
Thanks to USA women winning a third spot at the 2022 ISA Games, Simmers looks a likely candidate to join Olympic champion Carissa Moore and 2023 world champion Caroline Marks at Teahupo’o, but first she needs to prove herself at Puerto Rico.
As USA already have a third women’s quota, the pressure will be on the other teams to get an extra female surfer to Paris 2024. Australia and Japan are particularly strong contenders.
Two Australian women are already on the provisional list for Paris 2024. Two-time world champion Tyler Wright, whose older brother Owen won bronze in men's surfing at Tokyo 2020 in 2021, and rising star Molly Picklum, who recently became the first woman to score a perfect 10 at Pipeline.
For the moment, three-time World Surfing Games champion Sally Fitzgibbons is without a quota, but that could change with a bit of help from her teammates in Puerto Rico.
Japan is also a solid team all-around with Maeda Mahina and Olympic bronze medallist Tsuzuki Amuro hoping to join provisional qualifier Matsuda Shino in Tahiti.
Great Britain's Sky Brown is another big name to watch. The Olympic skateboarding medallist will try to become the first athlete to qualify in both surfing and skateboarding at an Olympic Games in what will be her first ISA World Surfing Games appearance.
Together with 15-year-old Brown, the youngest generation of surfers will have formidable representation in 16-year-old Canadian internet sensation Erin Brooks and 17-year-old Tiara van der Huls of the Netherlands who was the breakout star at the 2023 World Surfing Games.
Also expect a strong showing from the South American surfers in Puerto Rico. Miguel Tudela is looking to continue Peru’s hefty representation in Olympic surfing alongside two-time Pan American Games champion Lucca Mesinas.
On the women’s side, Luana Silva is the young star from Brazil, following in the footsteps of 2023 World Surfing Games champion Tatiana Weston-Webb, while Costa Rica’s Leilani McGonagle has high hopes for her second Olympic appearance after honing her barrelling skills at a surfing camp in Tahiti in July 2023.
Indonesia’s Rio Waida and Morocco’s Ramzi Boukhiam narrowly missed out on Paris 2024 spots in 2023 and arrive at the final Olympic qualifier among the biggest threats.
Schedule and competition format for ISA Surfing Games 2024
The men’s and women’s competition will begin on Saturday, 24 February.
The two top athletes in each heat will advance to the next round, while the lower-placed athletes will be relegated to the repechage.
Once in the repechage round, surfers can still advance to the final if they continue to place among the top two in their heats. If they place lower, they are eliminated from the competition.
The following schedule is tentative and subject to change depending on weather conditions.
- Friday, 23 February: Opening Ceremony and Parade of Nations
- Saturday, 24 February – Sunday, 3 March: Competition days
- Sunday, 3 March: Awards Ceremonies
How to watch ISA Surfing Games 2024 live
You can follow the action from anywhere in the world starting on 24 February through the Olympic Channel livestreams on Olympics.com and the official Olympics app. Highlights, reviews and feature interviews will also be available on the website.