USA Surfing Wins Bid To Govern Olympic Surf Program 

It’s hard to find a story much stranger than that of surfing becoming an Olympic sport, which goes a little bit like this: 

In 1969, a man named Fernando was born in Argentina. He started a sandal company that used photos of wonderfully curved women to market its products. It worked. He got rich and could focus on his other passions. 

Curiously, he proved to be most passionate about two things: funny hats and the idea of surfing in the Olympics. 

Fast forward to 2021, and there is surfing on an empty beach in Japan, looking like it normally does, but this time with the gravity of an ancient Greek sporting tradition weighing down on it. 

As a knock-on effect, those organizations that had been propping up tents and running (mostly) youth contests for decades, had to suddenly report to the International Olympic Committee. 

One such organization was USA Surfing, but an audit revealed they were doing it poorly, and temporarily surrendered their status as an Olympic National Governing Body, or NGB. 

Last year, a cashed-up ski federation run by a former WSL CEO tried to swoop in with a bid to govern American Olympic surfing. Backlash ensued, and support for USA Surfing poured in from just about everywhere — including the WSL CEO, the aforementioned ISA prez, and some world champs. Eventually, the ski crew realized they’d veered off piste, but it didn’t mean USA Surfing would automatically get re-certified. 

This week, however, the light finally flickered from yellow to green. 

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At this point in the story, you may be wondering what it means to be the National Governing Body for Olympic Surfing. Beyond propping up tents and running (mostly) youth surf events, they’ve got to provide coaching, infrastructure, and support for the nation’s best surfers in a way that ensures more of those ‘best surfers’ exist in the future. 

The reward for all this? Well, you get to walk into the Kellogg’s office and ask them if they’d care to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to partner with the United States’ Olympic surf team heading into a year in which Los Angeles will host the Games. 

While unlikely to play a major role in your experience of a finite amount of time as a conscious being on this planet, it is generally good news that surfers will be calling the shots here instead of a group of corporate ski reptiles based in Aspen.

As you were.