Ukrainian National Surf Team Debuts At World Junior Surfing Championship
The 2023 ISA World Junior Surfing Championship touchdown in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this week, and with 46 teams from around the world competing, it’s a chance to get a glimpse of the future of international competitive surfing. Historically, the World Junior Surfing Championship has been a good barometer for the Olympics as 33 of the 40 Olympians had World Junior experience.
In 2022, it was Team Hawaii taking the gold medal, with Australia getting silver, U.S.A. with bronze and France with the copper. With international talent continuing to develop and become more competitive, the race for the podium is more challenging than it’s ever been in the event’s near 20-year history. In terms of the growth of the sport, what’s really interesting to see is that Ukraine, Hungary, Czech Republic and Romania will all field teams this year. For Romania, it will be their first-ever ISA competition.
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It’s also very encouraging to see that there will be 177 young women surfing in the event, making up a total of 44 percent of all competitors. Among those making the trip to Rio will be Canada’s Sanoa Olin, who’s qualified for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. She’ll be competing in the Under 18 division.
“There is no better way to see the vision of the ISA for a better world through surfing achieved than through the youth,” ISA President Fernando Aguerre said in a press statement. “They are our future World Champions, future Olympians, future gold medalists, and the values learned through events like this will affect generations to come.”
The 2023 ISA World Junior Surfing Championship will run through December 3. Watch live here.
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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.