Five Surfers Qualify For Paris Olympics, Including Ecstatic Chinese Teen
The 2024 Olympic Surfing picture continues to gain clarity as five more surfers just qualified for the Paris Games. Four women and one man just got the good news based on their results at the ISA World Surfing Games taking place right now in Puerto Rico.
Making the trip to Tahiti this summer will be 14-year-old Chinese surfer Siqi Yang, who at present is the youngest wave-rider currently qualified. She’ll be joined by Israel’s Anat Lelior, Germany’s Camilla Kemp and Spain’s Janire Gonzalez-Extabarri, who all secured their Olympic spots in Puerto Rico yesterday.
“The Olympic dream is my dream, to qualify for the Olympics,” Yang said after receiving the news that she’d qualified. “I’m super happy, super excited to accomplish this today. Thanks to my country for supporting me to be here, and to my coach for bringing me to this level. I’m so happy, I’ve been training so hard for this.”
“We worked so hard for this and we sacrificed so much. It’s all about believing and keep going and keep working hard. We have such a hard working, strong team,” said Kemp.
On the men’s side of the draw, Peru’s Alonso Correa is the latest to earn a spot in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
“I’m so excited to go to Tahiti. It’s been like a dream of mine to surf that wave. I’ve been at Pipeline many years, but I’ve never been to Tahiti, so I’m super excited to go to a new place, similar style of wave, dangerous, big and heavy, but it’s going to be fun,” said Correa.
There are currently five more Olympic spots up for grabs for the men at the ISA World Surfing Games, while all the women’s spots have now been filled. Among the men still in contention are Tokyo 2020 Olympians Ramzi Boukhiam of Morocco and Rio Waida of Indonesia. Because of the Olympic rules, host country France is guaranteed one of the five remaining spots, which will come down to either Joan Duru or Marco Mignot depending on their final results in the event.
The ISA World Surfing Games run through March 3.
These Are The Surfers That Have Qualified For The Paris 2024 Olympic Games
With more than 25 years of writing about surfing, the ocean and action sports, Jake Howard continues to share stories, profiles and issues that shape the surfing world. One of the premier subject-matter experts in the field today, he's savvy in the ways of print, digital and social media, his breadth of work is expansive. Getting his start writing Surfline surf reports and recording the phone reports for 976-SURF in the late '90s, Jake served as the managing editor for Surfer Magazine in the early 2000s before moving on to launch RedBullSurfing.com and cover surfing for ESPN and the X Games. Over the years, Jake has also enjoyed time behind the edit desk at The Surfer's Journal, as well as the World Surf League, where he worked as the Senior Editor for a number of years. Beyond producing editorial content, Jake has served as a digital marketer and copywriter for iconic surf brands such as Quiksilver, Roxy and Rip Curl. Writing thousands of pages of copy for Surfline, he has deep SEO experience as well. The surf columnist for the San Clemente Times, Jake continues to dedicate himself to the culture and history of the sport through his involvement with the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente.