It has just been confirmed that surfing has officially made it into the Japan 2020 Olympics! The competition will take place in real waves in a place called Chiba, it will feature 20 men and 20 women and only include high performance shortboarding.
The event will take two days to run, with a two week waiting period and organisers claim they’re ‘very confident’ they’ll have waves of a ‘good quality’. As far as the competitor field Fernando Aguerre, president of the ISA and the man seemingly most in the know on the subject, told Surfer Mag that the WSL were on board to let their top athletes compete and that they would potentially be joined by ‘good surfers [from] Costa Rica, Peru [and] England’
There’s been some what of a backlash already against the decision, and more is inevitably soon to follow, with critics claiming that surfings inclusions will drive it to become more commercialised. However much of the surfing community seems to be celebrating the decision, and expressing their excitement at seeing our sport on such a prominent sporting stage. The plot will no doubt thicken in the years leading up to the games, but we’re interested to get your instant reaction to the news, so do pop it in the comments below.
