Three Indian surfers, Ajeesh Ali, Sanjay Selvamani and Ramesh Budihal, will be competing to qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympics at the ISA World Surfing Games 2023 scheduled in El Salvador from May 30 to June 7.
It will be for the first time that an Indian surfing team will take part in the flagship annual ISA World Surfing Games, which has been held since 1964. The Indian team was selected by the Surfing Federation of India (SFI) after a three-stage selection process.
The ISA World Surfing Games 2023 will offer eight Paris 2024 Olympic berths – four for men and four women. The event will be live streamed in India on Olympics.com.
The Olympic slots will be equally distributed among the highest-ranking male and female athletes from four continents – Africa, Asia, Europe and Oceania. The spots will go directly to individual athletes.
The three Indian surfers, all of them 22 years old, will be competing in the men’s open category. Ajeesh Ali is a three-time national champion while Ramesh Budihal has six national titles to his name. Sanjay Selvamani, meanwhile, is a five-time runner-up at the National Surfing Championships.
North and South American surfers, however, will have to wait for the 2023 Pan American Games in Chile to earn Paris 2024 berths.
However, the 2023 World Surfing Games in Surf City El Salvador will act as a qualifier for the PanAm Games. The top five men’s and top five women’s surfers from the Americas at the World Surfing Games will qualify for the 2023 Pan American Games, to be held in Santiago, Chile later this year.
With the stakes high, a total of 297 surfers from 64 countries will be riding the waves of La Bocana and El Sunzal during the ISA World Surfing Games 2023.
The line-up features top names in the world of surfing, including USA’s Olympic champion Carissa Moore and two-time World Surfing League champion John John Florence.
Japan’s Olympic silver medallist Kanoa Igarashi and three-time world champion Sally Fitzgibbons of Australia will also be vying for Paris 2024 qualification. As many as 28 of the 40 Olympians from Tokyo 2020 will be in action in El Salvador.
Surfing made its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020 with two medal events – men’s shortboard and women’s shortboard. Brazil’s Italo Ferreira and Carissa Moore of the USA won the men’s and women’s gold medals, respectively.
The Paris 2024 Olympic Games, meanwhile, will see a total of 48 athletes competing, 24 in the women’s competition and 24 in the men’s competition in Tahiti.
Costa Rica’s Brisa Hennessy, Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb, France’s Johanne Defay and Portugal’s Teresa Bonvalot have already qualified for Paris 2024 through the World Surf League Championship Tour.
Source : Olympic
