Joe Surf: Future Olympic champs might not truly be No. 1

The Olympics have come and gone, and the next time they stage the 2020 Games in Tokyo, they will include surfing.

Yay! Right?

Not so fast, says 11-time world champion Kelly Slater. And he’s got a point.

Slater says basically that an Olympic champion — presumably more prestigious than being the world champion — will be crowned based on one event, at one wave, over the course of a two-day competition. That’s not exactly a true measure of who would be crowned the world’s best surfer. In an interview with Joe Buck of Fox Sports, Slater expressed his concerns.

“What you’re going to do is you’re going to determine a world champion, or an Olympian, or the most famous surfer in the world, by one event in one type of condition,” he said. “Surfing is not really that.

“If you told me what those conditions were going to be, I could pretty much give you three guys at any given time in those types of conditions that are going to win. It’s going to be between those three guys. But we have a title [World Surf League’s World Championship Tour] that does it over different types of waves, different geographical places and over the course of a year. It’s a long performance.

“You weed out the best of the best.”

Ironically, the future of surfing in the Olympics likely will be all about wave pools — in which the conditions are exactly the same every time — and the Kelly Slater Wave Co. has created possibly the best wave pool in the world.

Keeping up with Kanoa

Huntington Beach’s Kanoa Igarashi placed an equal-13th in the Billabong Pro Tahiti, the seventh contest on the World Surf League’s (WSL) 11-contest World Championship Tour (WCT).

It was Igarashi’s sixth consecutive 13th-place finish after taking an equal-ninth in the first contest of the season. It continued a trend of Igarashi surfing well enough to win a heat — he’s won at least one heat in all seven WCT contests — but he has not been able to get as far as the quarterfinals in any event.

In Tahiti, Igarashi was up against Brazil’s Italo Ferreira and Hawaii’s Keanu Asing in his Round 1 heat and placed third. In elimination Round 2, Igarashi beat Brazil’s Miguel Pupo, but in Round 3, Igarashi lost to Joel Parkinson and was eliminated.

Court is adjourned

One might think Santa Ana’s Courtney Conlogue is itching to get back in the water in a WCT event so that she can reclaim the top spot in the world rankings.

Conlogue finished equal-fifth at the Vans U.S. Open, which dropped her from No. 1 in the world to No. 2, behind Australia’s Tyler Wright. That contest ended July 31, and the next contest — the Swatch Women’s Pro at Lower Trestles in San Clemente and the seventh in the 10-event season — doesn’t start until Sept. 7.

Conlogue, though, apparently isn’t moping around the house waiting for the next contest. Last week she spent time in Montauk, N.Y., which is on the tip of Long Island. And in the past few days she’s been in Cuba.

World surfing games

Huntington Beach’s Brett Simpson was part of the U.S. team that participated in the International Surfing Assn.’s World Surfing Games in Costa Rica earlier this month.

There were 26 countries represented, and each country represented had six surfers: four men and two women.

They compete individually, while scoring points for their country. The U.S finished third for the bronze, with Peru winning gold and Portugal winning silver.

Individually, the U.S.’s Tia Blanco won gold in the women’s competition. Simpson was the top men’s finisher from the U.S., taking equal-19th place out of 96 surfers in the competition.

The other U.S. surfers were Maddie Peterson (19th), Kevin Schulz (25th), Nolan Rapoza (25th) and Colt Ward (25th). The overall men’s winner was Leandro Usuna of Argentina.

Bodysurfing championships

The World Bodysurfing Championships were held in Oceanside last week, and a couple locals placed in their age division.

Dylan Biggerstaff and Augie Cunningham, both from Costa Mesa, placed first and third, respectively, in the 15-17 age group. Both boys are Huntington Beach Junior Lifeguards; Biggerstaff in the HB City program and Cunningham in the HB State program.

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JOE HAAKENSON is a Huntington Beach-based sports writer and editor. He may be reached at joe@juvecreative.com.