Who are the Indians to participate in Surfing World Games?

Published at :October 3, 2022 at 11:02 PM

Modified at :October 5, 2022 at 12:20 AM

Ajeesh Ali is the most experienced surfer from the country.

SFI (Surfing Federation of India) has announced that there will be Indian participation in the 2023 ISA World Games at El Salvador. The World Games are set to be held from May 30 to June 7 in 2023. The Games will also serve as the second qualifying event for Paris Olympics 2024. The first qualification was held in 2022.

Surfing got included in the Olympics calendar and was held at the Tokyo Olympics 2022. Italo Ferriera took the gold in the men's and Carisse Morr from the USA in the women's section.

Indian Participation

There will be a qualification round among the top Indian surfers and based on their performances the squad will be selected. The number of surfers to be selected from India is yet to be known. The top 14 surfers from the men's open section and the top four seeds from the grom's section (U-16) will be selected for a two-day training period set to be held in Kovelong on October 10 and 11.

List of qualified Indian Surfers (Open Section)

Ajeesh Ali
Ramesh Bhudial
Sajaikumar
Nitishvarun
Surya
Ruban
Srikanth
Sathish Saravanan
Manikandan
Sanjay Selvamani
Ragul
Harish
Sivaraj Babu

Groms Section (U16)

Kishore Kumar
Naveen Kumar
Tayin Arun
Jeeva S
Kalapathy S

The Indian Open for Surfing was held in May this year (2022) for both the men's, women's and the groms section. In the men's section, Ramesh Bhudial was declared the champion with a close challenge from Ajeesh Ali. Ramesh finished with a total score of 16.33, and Ajeesh Ali with 15.67.

Ajeesh Ali recently won the Kovelong surfing challenge which was held in August after a brief break of two years due to the pandemic. The 23-year-old Ajeesh was recently sent to the Maldives for foreign training trip by the SFI and shall be the one to watch out for. In 2019 Ajeesh took part in a few foreign meets in Sri Lanka and Thailand and was one of the most experienced surfers from India.

The Surfing Federation of India has taken a great initiative to send surfers to the World Meet which would help them gain valuable experience and also get to learn and interact with foreign surfers.