Alan Cleland, Tatiana Weston-Webb and Peru win world titles at 2023 ISA World Surfing Games as two more Paris 2024 quotas are awarded
Peru clinched team gold while Alan Cleland and Tatiana Weston-Webb won the individual titles. The two remaining tickets to Paris 2024 were also handed out with France’s Kauli Vaast and Japan’s Kanoa Igarashi bound for the Olympic surfing competition in Tahiti.
Surfing
Lightning, thunder and heavy rain lashed La Bocana on the morning of the finals at the 2023 ISA World Surfing Games, causing an almost two-hour delay in the start times. But neither the weather nor top-ranked opponents were enough to stop Mexican underdog Alan Cleland from winning his first world title.
Draped in the Mexican flag, an emotional Cleland could not have wished for a better ending: winning gold, beating defending champion and Olympic silver medallist Kanoa Igarashi, and setting the top wave score of the competition, among men or women, all in one final.
“It means everything. It’s something that I’ve worked for and put my time in since I started surfing and something that I wanted,” Cleland told Olympics.com. “It’s something that I strived (for), I dreamed, I put all my work into it. It came true and I can’t stop smiling. I’m just grateful.”
Brazil's Tatiana Weston-Webb claimed the women's world title, her career's fourth, while Peru won as a team with two athletes, Luca Mesinas and Miguel Tudela, also taking medals on the final day of competition.
Alan Cleland: Underdog becomes champion
At 21 years old and low in the pack on the Men's Challenger Series, Cleland was not among the headliners when he arrived in El Salvador for the 2023 ISA World Surfing Games, but as the eight-day competition progressed, the Mexican showed that he is not one to be taken lightly.
Cleland finished the competition with three entries among the Top 10 highest-scoring waves, including the 9.73-point scorcher he saved for the final against Igarashi and Peru’s Luca Mesinas and Miguel Tudela.
Now qualified to the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games, Cleland’s performance in El Salvador also got him closer to qualifying for his first Olympic Games.
If South Africa’s Jordy Smith, who received the ticket to Paris 2024 on Day 6 of competition, qualifies again through the World Championship Tour, Cleland would become the top candidate to replace Smith for the quota from the 2023 ISA World Surfing Games.
“It’s been a huge goal of mine, getting to the Olympics, that’s why I came here," Cleland said. "I knew this wasn’t a qualifier, but I wanted to surf against the Olympians and I want to be here and show that I can do it.
“I felt like the underdog the whole time. I knew I had the talent, I knew I had the drive, I knew I had the fire, and now it shows.”
2023 ISA World Surfing Games: Team title for Peru
Peru's Luca Mesinas finished second in the final against Cleland, while his teammate Miguel Tudela was third.
With Sol Aguirre also in contention for the women’s title until the final rounds, Peru collected enough points to win the team title, surpassing France and Brazil.
This marks the second time that Peru wins the team title. Their previous victory was in Costa Rica in 2016.
Tatiana Weston-Webb: First for Brazil
While Cleland celebrated his first ISA world title, it was the third for Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb, a two-time ISA U-18 world junior champion. What made it more special, however, is that it was the first title the surfer, who grew up in Hawaii, won while representing Brazil.
Weston-Webb also secured her quota for Santiago 2023 while in El Salvador and is now looking ahead to more victories and her ultimate goal, winning gold at the Olympic Games.
“Surfing is soaring and with it now being in the Olympics…it’s just elevated our sport to a different level," she said. "It’s given people from all over the world dreams to be Olympic gold medallists and for me, that’s my biggest dream so I’m going to keep fighting until I can hopefully get one.”
Weston-Webb made solid progress through the competition, never leaving the main round, but it looked like her dominant run would end in the final. She trailed in the back of the four-woman heat and struggled to catch a good wave until posting double 7.50 scores in the final minutes.
Erin Brooks: 15-year-old breakout star of the Games
While Weston-Webb waited for two solid waves to make her comeback, Canada’s Erin Brooks took little time to make a big statement – one of many she's made over the past eight days.
The 15-year-old took the lead in the final against two Olympians, Weston-Webb and France's Johanne Defay, and another experienced surfer, Vahine Fierro, who earned her quota to Paris 2024 the previous day. For Brooks the final was the culmination of a week spent battling her way up through 11 repechage rounds, sometimes surfing as many as three heats a day.
Her ultimate reward for the effort was not only a silver medal in a heat against two of the World Championship Tour’s top-ranked surfers, but also something more personal.
“My dad told me that I can get a puppy if I make the final,” Brooks told Olympics.com. “And that’s super exciting.”
Brooks first found herself in the spotlight a year ago when videos of her aerial tricks in a wave pool went viral. Now she was one of the youngest and smallest competitors at the 2023 ISA World Surfing Games – and eager to prove her worth.
“Sometimes people say that I am sort of a one-trick pony, like a wave pool kid because that’s what I went viral for, but they don’t expect me to surf good in the ocean or know how to surf a heat, and they don’t expect me to do well against such gnarly competitors,” Brooks said. “But I know what I’m capable of and I really wanted to show the world that.”
Like Weston-Webb, Brooks secured her ticket to Santiago 2023 through the 2023 ISA World Surfing Games.
The Pan American Games are an Olympic qualifier where two tickets, one per gender, will be given out to the top-ranked surfers from the Americas. And Brooks is already coveting that spot.
“I definitely want to achieve my dream of making the Olympics, Paris 2024, that would be so crazy,” the teen said. “That would be at Teahupo’o, that’s on my friendly side. I feel very comfortable in left barrels so I think I would have a good chance at a medal.”
Kanoa Igarashi and Kauli Vaast: Tahiti-bound
The remaining two quotas to Paris 2024 were also given out on the final day of competition.
Tokyo 2020 silver medallist Kanoa Igarashi took the men’s quota for Asia, while Tahiti-native Kauli Vaast will make his Olympic debut after claiming the men’s spot for Europe.
“It’s such an honour to be in this position," Igarashi said. “The Olympics changed my life and to be here again in a position where I can go there and represent my country and try to get another medal, it means the world to me."
Discover more about the eight athletes who qualified to Paris 2024 through the 2023 ISA World Surfing Games and get the full results from the final days of the competition on Olympics.com.