Last night, during an online press conference, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that the International Surfing Association’s (ISA) request to include longboarding as a separate medal event at the 2028 Olympics had been rejected. The proposal had called for a quota of 16 men and 16 women. A parallel request to increase athlete quotas in shortboarding was also denied.
Surfing made its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, and for India, the sport marked a milestone in 2024 with the formation of its first-ever national team for Olympic qualifiers. It’s still early days, so the decision doesn’t come as a shock. “I think it’s very easy to look at this decision and get disappointed in a bad way,” ISA President Fernando Aguerre told The Inertia. “But it’s just fuel to do things better and different the next time. We’re fully committed to Brisbane 2032.”
For the LA 2028 Games, the IOC is sticking to its cap of 10,500 athletes. With the addition of new team sports like flag football and cricket, the available athlete quota had to be redistributed. Sports like breakdancing, which featured in Paris 2024, were dropped — and their athlete spots were allocated elsewhere. In that shuffle, surfing didn’t gain any extra quota, leaving no room to add longboarding as a separate discipline or expand shortboarding participation.
While the ISA continues its push for inclusion, the bigger question is this: does the Olympic decision shape how young athletes in India view longboarding as a viable pursuit?
Earlier this year, the Varkala Jam — a grassroots longboarding event — attempted to answer that. Organised by a collective of surf schools in Varkala, Kerala, the event aimed to promote the more expressive, laid-back side of surfing. A hotspot for international tourists looking for waves and wellness, Varkala offered the perfect backdrop.
“We literally had a category called ‘anything but shortboard’ at the jam,” said Joel Rollason of Soul & Surf, a surf and yoga retreat based in Varkala, Sri Lanka, and Portugal. “Our slogan was, ‘It’s not a competition, it’s a jam.’ The idea was to show that longboarding can be fun, creative, and a legitimate alternative.”
The vibe carried over to Sri Lanka too, where a select few Indian longboarders were invited to participate in a follow-up jam — building connections across the subcontinent’s budding surf scenes.
The Indian coastline sees waves year-round. The west coast works best from October to May, while the east coast lights up from late June through October. And then there’s the monsoon swell — a seasonal gift that brings powerful cyclone waves toward the year’s end. During summer and cyclone seasons, the waves can match some of the world’s best surf spots. But a quieter question lingers: why do most surfers still wait for that perfect swell — while ignoring the beautiful, consistent baby waves that roll in all year long?
Sanjay Selvamani, a former national team athlete and now assistant coach to the Indian team, shares this sentiment. “We do have waves throughout the year for longboarding, but athletes still remain stuck to shortboards,” he says. “They don’t realise a lot can be done on a longboard — even things that shortboards are known for showing off.”
Surfing came to India from the outside. Longboarding, though often seen as a more laid-back or alternative style today, is actually where surfing began — rooted in the ancient Polynesian tradition, where it was practiced not as a sport but as a sacred ritual. Hawaiian royalty rode boards over 10 feet long, carved from native wood, gliding with reverence and grace.
Yes, longboarding predates shortboarding — by centuries. But in India, surfing has no ancestral or spiritual lineage. It arrived more recently, shaped by outside influence. It caught on when coastal kids watched men ripping on shortboards and started practicing on whatever boards were left behind.
“It’s a huge step that we have a team now — it’s the first step. Maybe I’ll wait until they make a team for longboarding,” says Ishita Malaviya, India’s first female surfer and a dedicated longboarder, in a conversation we had for an upcoming feature on women’s surfing in India for our first print edition.
