Power ranking every single sport at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics

30. Surfing

Gnarly. Hang ten, dude. Cowabunga and all that jazz. This isn’t the surfing of bros. Surfing today is wicked. It’s a judgment event, which, as we’ve stated, isn’t our favorite, but there are elements of surfing that make it much easier for the fair-weather fan to follow. We understand what’s impressive when it comes to tricks and sequences in this sport.

Surfing is generally self-explanatory. There are two real mediums of surfing. There are just plainly riding waves, with the bigger waves being the goal. Then, there’s the performance aspect of surfing. The latter is what we see at the Olympics. Judges take account of multiple categories when analyzing a heat. They want to see the variety, type, and difficulty of the tricks.

It’s also very important that surfers are able to connect one trick to the other. There are variables at play that make a surfing routine hard to predict. The size of the wave is the obvious one, but the quality of the water underneath and the time of day (impacting the tide) can all have an impact on a surfer’s heat. 

Surfers also use a different board than we traditionally associate with surfing. We think of longboards, which are usually taller than the surfers themselves. Instead, surfers choose shortboards to give them more speed and maneuverability. It’s truly an impressive sport that is fascinating to watch. Maybe one day, technology and creativity will help us create a surfing race, but until then, we’re satisfied right here.