who will be significantly absent from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games?

Kelly Slater, since it is obviously him when we talk about the “surfing legend”, had made it the ultimate objective of his immense and long career. “If I make the Games, I will retire at the Games,” he had clearly announced during the year 2023. A few months earlier, the King was not fooled: “Qualification is potentially more difficult for me than winning the Olympic Games. If I am, I think I will have a chance to win. » And for good reason, the eleven-time world champion is a tuberiding virtuoso and the surfer with the most victories in the CT round contested on the Tahitian wave of Teahupo’o, chosen to host the Paris 2024 events.

Far from counting on the CT 2023, qualifier for the Olympics, the 52-year-old Floridian could therefore only rely on an “extra quota”, which would have allowed the United States to break the limit of two qualifiers by genre and to line up three surfers in Teahupo’o. Grated, there too, since the American team was not able to finish at the top of the men’s ranking of the ISA Worlds 2022 or 2024, which would have ensured to see a third representative to the star-spangled banner in Tahiti.

The lucky one would not have been Slater anyway. In April 2023, the American Surfing Federation had, in fact, issued an official note that went under the radar, which planned to grant the “extra quota” to the resident of the CT who would reach at least the semi-finals or better of the Tahiti Pro that year, apart from the two Olympic qualifiers (Colapinto and Florence). An edition of the Polynesian event which saw the King eliminated in the round of 16, when his compatriot Barron Mamiya managed to reach the last four…

And if Slater was able to benefit, throughout his unclassifiable career, from a few small favors from the ASP/WSL, the gods of Olympus remained deaf, until the end, to the appeals of that of the surf. Now he is no longer very far from becoming a mere mortal again, he who has never seemed so close to retirement.

Italo Ferreira, Lord of the Rings

He made surfing and Olympic history by becoming, in 2021 in Tokyo, the very first Olympic surfing champion. Italo Ferreira was then at the top of Olympus and the globe, since he was the reigning world champion for a few more weeks, before Gabriel Medina dethroned him at the end of the season. Since this golden period, the Brazilian has no longer conquered the WSL crown, even if he came very close in 2022 (2nd), nor even won the slightest event on the CT. Worse, he missed out – for a surfer of his caliber – on the 2023 season (13th), really not the one he needed, since the only qualifier for the Olympics.

The two auriverde Olympic tickets gleaned by Filipe Toledo and Joao Chianca, Ferreira could still have eyed the possible “extra quota”, allowing Brazil to present a third surfer to Teahupo’o. But being the first Olympic champion in history and in title does not grant any privileges. If Brazil did win the “extra quota” at the 2024 ISA Worlds, it was Gabriel Medina who returned it, as the Brazilian Surfing Federation had indicated in 2023 in a press release: it then specified that the third best auriverde surfer of the CT 2023 – in this case Medina – would be summoned for the ISA 2024 Worlds and that in the event of obtaining the precious third ticket for Paris 2024, it would return to him.

Italo Ferreira will not, however, be completely absent from the Paris 2024 Olympics. He will, in fact, commentate on the surfing events for Brazilian TV.

Stephanie Gilmore, world title record holder

The 2024 Olympics will be deprived of the King of surfing (Slater), but also of his “Queen”. Record holder of world titles with eight crowns to her credit (the last in 2022), Stephanie Gilmore missed qualification for the Paris Games by one place on the 2023 CT, going to the young Molly Picklum, who will accompany the double world champion Tyler Wright at Teahupo’o.

Well present at those in Tokyo, the 36-year-old Australian had a long life, since she was eliminated in the round of 16 by the future silver medalist, the South African Bianca Buitendag. This time, she will not even see the Olympic spot, where she reached the quarter-finals of the CT event the last two years. If she takes a break this season, Gilmore has already planned to return to competition in 2025. Not sure, however, that she will still be active for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 and even less for those of 2032, in his country, in Brisbane.

Erin Brooks, the world surfing prodigy

At Teahupo’o, she would have been an unavoidable candidate for a medal, and not necessarily the least flashy… But now, Erin Brooks will not be donning Lycra for the Olympics this summer. The 16-year-old phenomenon, who is on track to join the CT in 2025 after her victory in the first Challenger Series of the season then her final in the second, did not manage to qualify and it is not entirely its done. The native Texan found herself, last year, at the heart of an imbroglio concerning her Canadian citizenship, the country whose colors she now wears in competition, and which had not been clearly established during her participation in the 2023 ISA Worlds where she finished… vice-world champion.

Although her result was not withdrawn, she was, however, suspended from any competition linked to the International Surfing Association (ISA), pending her situation being regularized. With the (big) consequence, that she missed, at the end of 2023, the Pan American Games, qualifiers for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, which could therefore (should) have allowed her to obtain her Olympic sesame. It was his… little-known compatriot Sanoa Dempfle-Olin who took it on this occasion.

Her Canadian citizenship finally granted at the beginning of 2024, Erin Brooks was able to participate in the 2024 ISA Worlds, which delivered the last tickets for the Games. Alas, she ranked far too far away in 49th place. And that’s how, the one who caused a sensation in 2022 by being the youngest and first woman invited (she was 15 years old) to the Rip Curl Padang Padang, then above all by reaching the final of the legendary Balinese event of… tubes in a table – apart from her – 100% male, finds itself outside the Games. A boon for all the other potential medal winners

Michel Bourez, the Spartan

Just a few days after the awarding of the first Olympic surfing medals in Tokyo, we took the risk of projecting ourselves by establishing a French selection for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Forecasts which turned out to be 75% accurate since we included Johanne Defay, Vahine Fierro and Kauli Vaast in our quartet of qualifiers for the Teahupo’o events. The fourth was… Michel Bourez.

Relegated from CT at the end of the 2021 season, which he had attended continuously since 2009, not spared from injuries, the 38-year-old Tahitian nevertheless wanted to believe in it until the end. To the point of leaving his wife and children, last summer, in his Polynesian paradise, to join Europe and come to battle on the “modest” QS circuit, he the former formidable resident of the elite. A sacrifice, at the twilight of his career, marked with the seal of an ultimate objective. “I am here because I am clearly aiming to qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games,” he told us on the sidelines of Pro Anglet.

Unfortunately for the Spartan (the Spartan, his nickname), the results did not follow and the selection he coveted for the 2024 ISA Worlds disappeared. Along with his hopes of competing in Teahupo’o for the Olympics. But there is no doubt that he will be watching more than just his promising Polynesian foals as the Olympic deadline approaches.

Sally Fitzgibbons, the eternal smile

65 then 35. That is to say the number of points that Australia missed to obtain a women’s “extra quota” during the ISA 2022 and 2024 World Championships, which the Aussie selection finished in second place each time among women while only the first gave the right to this third ticket by gender for the Paris 2024 Olympics. Not saying that it would have gone to Sally Fitzgibbons, but a minimum of decency would have been enough to nominate her.

Never crowned on the ASP/WSL pro circuit, despite three honorary places as vice-world champion (from 2010 to 2012) and around ten victories, the 33-year-old Australian, a true all-terrain athlete, has experienced a completely different achievement at ISA events, where she was crowned world champion a record four times, most recently at this year’s Worlds. But like Joan Duru in 2021 for the Tokyo Games, this coronation did not open the doors to those in Paris. Terribly cruel, like his relegation from CT this mid-season, for the third year in a row. But nothing that darkens his eternal smile.