In everything that has to do with Olympic qualification, the ISA has the upper hand and will do everything in its power to make its events as relevant as possible.

And in fact, he has done so in these two Olympic cycles.

The first measure that was not very popular was that those who qualified or could qualify for the games had to participate in the ISA World Surfing Games. But once the law was made, the trap was set: Many went, surfed a series and abandoned the event, causing dozens of controversial situations: More than one potential Olympic surfer had to do a series of three people and another one of four… In other words, the CT walkover generated injustices.

There was even a series where Carissa Moore and Caroline Marks were together and the series ended with two people moving forward directly, if I remember correctly.

Thus, for Paris 2024 the ISA put two spicy elements, at least spicy in the eyes of a spectator, or an analyst or the ISA itself: The winning team of the ISA World Surfing Games 2022 and 2024 won an extra male and female slot.

The other element: Olympic seeding would be based on the surfers' placement in the event.

In some cases, the incentive worked: Gabriel Medina was seen giving probably his best surfing show of the year, giving his all for his team to win and to go to the Games to win gold. Brazil beat France by a very close score and made the perfect scenario by taking six athletes out of six possible athletes.

The rest of the countries either paid no attention to the incentive or didn't care. In fact, the performance of Caity Simmers in the losing heat gave the United States a telling warning that if they saw such behavior again, they would remove surfers from the Games.

But at the end of the day, if you look at the results, the World Surfing Games were not dominated by CTs, there were poor results from the world champion, from John John, from Kanoa and so on.

That is, they did not leave their lives on the court either to have a good seeding or to achieve the extra slot.

Only Brazil and France did so.

So, it is clear that the incentives are not enough and it seems clear that the ISA is going to ask more from the CTs so that their events can be seen, for example, the Miyazaki 2019 show, with Italo, Kolohe, Medina in the final and Slater finishing fifth.

An event that was almost a miracle because the same trap mentioned previously could have been executed there.

So what can we expect now?

Many people think that it is fair to leave the CTs alone for the CT and the non-CTs alone for the World Surfing Games, but does anyone think it is possible that the ISA will deprive itself of having the vast majority of the most famous surfers in the world in its events? Whoever thinks so is wrong. What the ISA is going to do is continue to tighten the screws so that the CTs have even more incentives to compete in the World Surfing Games.

That is, we can expect everything that already exists:

-CTs classified or in the process of qualifying are obliged to compete in the World Surfing Games

-CTs getting extra slots through the World Surfing Games

-The seeding put together by the latest and greatest (and most expensive for the host) World Surfing Games

A: It is quite easy to deduce that CTs are required to have a minimum quality at ISA events. That is to say: Qualify for the CT, yes, but come to the ISA and you have to be at least 30th, for example.

This is one of the assumptions that can be made for the Olympic cycle that will end in Los Angeles 2028.

This may be seen as an unfriendly move by the ISA, but the ISA will say that it is just as unfriendly as going to an event and competing half-heartedly.

The other thing that seems pretty clear that it is going to end is the regional classification in which New Zealand and Africa are basically going to stroll to the event and qualify and on the other hand, Europeans and Latin Americans are killing themselves, the latter to qualify for the Pan American Games, that is, having to compete in one more event to go to the Games.