The finalists of the 2025 ISA World Surfing Games were decided on Saturday, 13 September as the men’s and women’s fields shrunk to six athletes each.
Olympic champion Kauli Vaast, who finished third in 2024, is leading the charge for France after advancing to the penultimate round together with teammate Jorgann Couzinet. France currently sit third in the ranking for the overall team title, having finished as runner-up the previous two years.
Both Frenchmen advanced from their heats in second place, behind surfers from Australia. Vaast was 1.20 points behind Morgan Cibilic who picked up 14.67 points in the first heat, while Couzinet was second to Dane Henry, who got 14.5 points.
These four surfers will face each other again on Sunday, 14 September with the bottom two then going up against the last repechage survivors, Brazil’s Douglas Silva and Morocco’s Teva Bouchgua.
Australia also still has two women in the main round – four-time and reigning World Surfing Games champion Sally Fitzgibbons and Ellie Harrison – which makes them a solid bet to clinch the overall team title this year. They currently have 4,585 points while the next runners-up are 2023 winners Peru with 3,473 points.
Only one Peruvian remains in the running, crushing the team’s hopes of reclaiming their title from two years ago. Daniella Rosas was eliminated in the eighth women’s repechage, while Sol Aguirre missed the cut to go to finals day by slightly more than a point in the following round.
Fifth in 2024, Alonso Correa made it through one repechage heat after dropping out of the main round earlier on Saturday, but could not reach the top two in the final repechage of the day, which means Peru has no surfers left to fight for the men’s title.
Janire Etxabarri is the last Spaniard still in competition with Japan’s Tsuzuki Nanaho as the only surfer from Asia with a chance to win an individual title.
The World Surfing Games competition wraps up on Sunday, 14 September. You can follow all the action from finals day on Olympic Channel via Olympics.com.