Cover photo: Piccolo Clemente, ranked second in the region, preferred to go to the ISA World Championships rather than seek a spot in the WSL CT at the Saquarema event. Photo: ISA/Jimenez 

The conflict of dates that arose with the Saquarema Surfing Festival taking place at the same time as the ISA Longboard World Championship in El Salvador ended up showing a clear preference for the second event, as can be seen in the list of entrants.

While the first has 19, 12 men and seven women, the second broke records with 132 longboarders; if we only consider Latin America (since the event is part of the WSL Latin America) there are 50 registered in the ISA tournament.

The Saquarema tournament is of utmost importance within the WSL sphere as it can mean qualification for the World Longboarding Championship, the WSL A in the discipline that defines the world champion.

Surfers who are in the WSL ranking because they competed in stage 1 held in Uruguay, chose to go to El Salvador, such as Piccolo Clemente, Julián Schweizer, Sebastián Cárdenas, Carlos Bahía, María Fernanda Reyes, Luana Soares, Inés Beisso and Camille Beauvois.

According to DUKE, based on information provided by several athletes, a request was made to the regional WSL to allow longboarding in the first few days and then for the athletes to travel to El Salvador, but tour manager Roberto Perdigao denied this request.

Perdigao himself explained that the QS 5000 has priority over the Longwood and that he would not give any guarantee that what was explained in the previous paragraph would happen.

According to Perdigao, “once again” the ISA placed an event that coincides with this one in Saquarema (he is referring to the 2023 Pan American Games in Santa Catalina, which generated the same situation but also with shortboarders).

When it came to choosing, surfers, including the most prestigious Brazilian longboarders, went for the ISA tournament.

Given the results of the series and the current rankings, the regional classification for the longboard CT will be a close one between the leader Jefson Silva, Matías Maturano and Wenderson Biludo.

Among the women, the fight will be between the second in the ranking Kate Brandi (since Luana Soares is going to El Salvador), Rayanne Amaral, Aylar Cinti and Evelyn Gontier, who are registered for the event in Brazil.

The Saquarema Festival started today and runs until the 21st, and the ISA World Longboard Championship runs from the 19th to the 25th.