Rio Waida's Chances For The 2024 Paris Olympics Are Still Open Despite Failing To Achieve Gold At The 2022 ISA World Surfing Games

Rio Waida (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - Indonesian surfer Rio Waida won a silver medal at the ISA World Surfing Games 2022 which took place in badminton Beach, California, United States, Saturday local time.

Rio got a score of 14.04, 1.92 adrift of Japanese athlete Kanoa Igarashi who closed the final match with a highest score of 15.96 for the gold medal, according to the official records of the International Surfing Association (ISA), Sunday.

With Igarashi's victory in California, Japan has secured a men's slot at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Quoted by Antara, Sunday, Rio, who also appeared at the Tokyo Olympics, was ranked second in today's final, ahead of his opponent, Jackson Baker of Australia who is in third place with 11.67 points and Guilherme Fonseca from Portugal with 9.36 points.

Rio actually almost secured a place for Indonesia at the 2024 Paris Olympics if he could get the highest points in the final that day.

However, Rio's opportunity for the quadrennial world sports event is still wide open, especially since the 2022 ISA World Surfing Games has just opened the opening tournament for the 2024 Paris Olympics qualifiers.

The qualifying surfing competition will still take place until 2024.

For the men's category, there are 21 remaining quotas that will be contested in a number of competitions, including 10 tickets from the World Surfing League (WSL) Championship Tour which will be held in January-September 2023 and one quota for the best representatives in each contingent at ISA World Surfing Games 2023.

In addition, there are still five other quotas for five athletes with the highest rankings in the 2024 ISA World Surfing Games (WSG) and one slot for the best NOC at the 2024 ISA WSG.