The first surfing qualifier for the Paris Olympics, the 2022 ISA WSG (International Surfing Association World Surfing Games), begins on Friday, and Great Britain has sent a full team of three men and three women. The event will only qualify the highest-ranked team for men and women, and it would be very unlikely to even imagine GB getting anywhere near that. However, the experience for our sextet is by no means a bad thing.
With the event in Huntington Beach, California, USA, also known as “Surf City” due to the popularity and good conditions for the sport, we will start with the men’s side, Luke Dillon had some decent results at junior level but at 27 is already thinking for the future, saying that his dream is to set up an elite surfing academy in the UK and inspire those from this non-traditional surfing country to believe there is a path to the top. He wasn’t too far off the Tokyo Olympics, coming 25th in the 2021 event in El Salvador’s own “Surf City”, La Libertad. Welsh duo Patrick Langdon-Dark and Logan Nicol, 22 and 23 respectively, will be hoping to show what they’re capable of at this level.
On the women’s side, Alys Barton, 18, is stringing together some impressive results on the qualifying series tour, while Lucy Campbell will be well known to any fan of British surfing, being the multiple-times British champion. Ellie Turner is also in decent form.
In the 2021 event, when there was a combined men’s and women’s ranking for teams, GB came 14th, which is much better than I expected before I did research into this article. That said, I would not seriously hope for GB to come first in either gender and get a spot at this event, but instead watch with interest to see how far the gap is to the world’s elite.
GB Games 