By Lincoln Feast
(Reuters) – Three time world champion Gabriel Medina won surfing’s final Olympic qualifying event in Puerto Rico on Sunday, giving him a likely spot in an expanded Brazilian team that will go for gold in the perfect tubes of Teahupo’o in Tahiti in six months time.
Brazil won both the men’s and women’s team events at the International Surfing Association’s world surfing games on the Caribbean island, giving them one extra berth for each gender for the Paris 2024 Games, at the discretion of the National Olympic Committee. Countries are usually restricted to just two spots each for men and women.
“I didn’t know if my spot was going to come, but I just tried to give my best,” Medina said after finishing the event undefeated in eight straight heats. “(If) I don’t go, someone else is going to go and that’s it, we are a team. I think everyone was in that spirit, so that helps a lot.”
Medina, 30, is one of the best ever in the powerful and sometimes terrifying barrels of the Olympic venue Teahupo’o, reaching the finals of the world tour event there six times and winning it twice.
His likely qualification is a big boost for the Brazilian men’s surfing team, which won the sport’s first gold medal through Italo Ferreira at the Tokyo 2020 Games, but which is facing doubts over the participation of both other qualifiers.
Reigning world champion Filipe Toledo decided to take a year off the professional tour, citing mental health issues after a disappointing performance at the season-opener in the heavy waves of Pipeline in Hawaii. He has yet to commit publicly to the Olympics at Teahupo’o, where he has struggled in the big backhand barrels in the past.
Fellow qualifier Joao Chianca was badly injured during a pre-season warm-up surf at Pipeline late last year and has not surfed in competition since.
Tokyo 2020 Olympian Sally Fitzgibbons of Australia won the women’s event, a fourth ISA victory, but missed out on an Olympics spot as her country had already qualified two women via the professional world tour.
Earlier, Yang Siqi, a 14-year-old from China, become the first surfer from her country and the youngest person to qualify for the sport at the Olympics, ending surf and skate star Sky Brown’s bid to represent Britain in both sports at the Paris games in the process.
QUALIFIERS FROM 2024 ISA WORLD SURFING GAMES
WOMEN
Nadia Erostarbe (Spain)
Sol Aguirre (Peru)
Taina Hinckel (Brazil)
Yolanda Sequeira (Portugal)
Anat Lelior (Israel)
Camilla Kemp (Germany)
Janire Gonzalez-Etxabarri (Spain)
Siqi Yang (China)
MEN
Andy Criere (Spain)
Joan Duru (France)
Ramzi Boukhiam (Morocco)
Rio Waida (Indonesia)
Tim Elter (Germany)
Alonso Correa (Peru)
ADDITIONAL TEAM SPOTS
WOMEN – Brazil
MEN – Brazil
(Reporting by Lincoln Feast in Sydney; Editing by Toby Davis)
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