The International Surfing Association’s (ISA) 2017 World Open Surfing Games, is set to take place in Biarritz, France. The event is from May 20-28, this year’s event features a record number of participating nations, as the Federation continues its global expansion following Olympic inclusion to Tokyo 2020.

Much of the recent global growth of the sport of surfing can be attributed to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decision in August 2016 to include Surfing on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Programme. Non-traditional Surfing nations such as Afghanistan, China, Chinese Taipei, Greece, Senegal and South Korea, have ridden this wave of momentum to field teams in the 2017 ISA World Surfing Games for the first time in the event’s history.

For Fiji it’s an historic event as it’s the first time Fiji has sent an Open team to the world titles. Lesi Navuwai and Che Slatter have been selected to carry this honour, John Philp is the manager.

Special thanks to the Fiji National Sports Commission for their generous funding of the campaign and to Cloudbreak for the team uniform.

The World Open Surfing Games is the ISA’s flagship event and has run since the inaugural edition in 1964, making it the longest running Surfing World Championship in the world.The 2017 edition of the ISA World Surfing Games also marks the ISA’s first event since the agreement of an official partnership with the Olympic Channel.

The broadcasting platform will collaborate with the ISA on content creation and will also live stream the World Surfing Games.

Surfing’s ability to reach a new young audience will bring a whole new selection of fans to the World Open Surfing Games. Watch the event live on May 20-28 on www.isaworlds.com