France Wins Historic First-Ever Team World Championship at 2017 ISA World Surfing Games

Biarritz, France, May 27, 2017: France Wins Historic First Ever, Heading into the final day of the 2017 ISA World Surfing Games, the ISA is pleased to officially announce that the host country Team France has made history and won their first-ever Team World Championship in the competition.

Team France got off to a spectacular start with Pauline Ado and Johanne Defay finishing with Gold and Silver in the Women’s Division earlier this week, and now Jeremy Flores and Joan Duru have advanced to the Men’s Semifinals on Sunday. With these results, no other team is in a position to reach France’s point totals.

With the team competition decided, the individual medals will still be highly contested on Sunday afternoon at Grande Plage, Biarritz. Eight surfers’ dreams of winning the Gold Medal are still alive. The Semifinal match ups are the following:

Semifinal 1:
Pedro Henrique (POR)
Jhony Corzo (MEX)
Jeremy Flores (FRA)
Vicente Romero (ESP)

Semifinal 2:
Jonathan González (ESP)
Yassine Ramdani (MAR)
Jordy Collins (USA)
Joan Duru (FRA)

ISA President Fernando Aguerre said:

“Congratulations to Team France for winning their first-ever ISA World Surfing Games Team World Championship. An amazing accomplishment that should be saluted.

“We are only three years from the Olympic Games… Some of these surfers could very well be competing in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

“I am also very excited to see the universality of our sport in the semifinals with surfers from Europe, the Americas and Africa vying for the Gold Medal.”

The seventh day of competition kicked off with Round 3 and 4 in sunny, clean conditions at Grande Plage. The swell increased as expected and the remaining members of the 47 National Surfing Teams left it all in the ocean, pushing as hard as they could for a chance to advance to the final day to win a medal for their nations.

The only countries relatively closely trailing France struggled through Rounds 3 and 4, as teams that had solid results in the Women’s Division, such as Costa Rica and South Africa, lost the last of their remaining men.

The Quarterfinals finished off the day of competition in continued clean conditions and set the stage for the Semifinals to take place on Sunday.

In the first Quarterfinal, Portugal’s Pedro Henrique, who finished 5th at the 2016 edition, continued his on-point Surfing that has been on display all week and advanced onto the finals with the last African surfer remaining, Morocco’s Yassine Ramdani. Peru’s Cristobal de Col and France’s Dmitri Ouvre were eliminated, resulting in the first French elimination in the Men’s Division One of the top highlights of the Quarterfinals was when the three remaining French surfers, Jeremy Flores, Vincent Duvignac, and Joan Duru, squared off in the same heat.

Thousands flocked to Grand Plage to watch France’s top surfers compete at once. Jeremy Flores made it clear that he intends to win Gold and marked the event’s highest wave score thus far of 9.33.

Flores’s heat total of 15.83 was the highest of the Quarterfinals and advanced him into the Semifinals along with teammate Joan Duru (11.10). Vincent Duvignac (FRA) and Luis Maria Iturria (URU) placed third and fourth respectively, ending their run in the event.

The final Quarterfinal featured a heroic performance from the 18-year-old from Team USA Jordy Collins. Collins backed up his solid opening score of 6.23 with a huge aerial maneuver that catapulted him into first position, sending him through to the Semifinals along with Spain’s Vicente Romero Portugal’s Miguel Blanco and Peru’s Juninho Urcia were left behind in third and fourth positions.

The final day of competition will take place at Grande Plage in Biarritz, France with the first call to start the event at 9:30am local time (CET). The event will be live streamed by the Olympic Channel and France TV, exemplifying the ISA’s strategy to bring Surfing to a wider, global audience.

Additionally, the ISA will run its unique Aloha Cup competition. The ISA Aloha Cup is a team relay event that includes the top eight teams from the 2016 ISA World Surfing Games in Costa Rica. Three men and one woman on each team surf in the relay, summing up the wave totals from each athlete in a 40 minute heat. The team that ends up having the highest overall heat score wins. The heats for the ISA Aloha Cup are as follows:

Semifinal 1
Peru
France
Costa Rica
New Zealand

Semifinal 2
Portugal
USA
Argentina
Japan

The schedule for Sunday’s competition is as follows*:

9:30 am call
2 Semifinals Open Men
1 Final Open Men
2 Semifinals ISA Aloha Cup
1 Final ISA Aloha Cup. —- Photo: ISA / Sean Evans