Costa Rica’s National Surfing Team concluded its participation in the ISA World Surfing Games in Biarritz, France having only earned one bronze medal, which was won by Leilani McGonagle; however, the overall participation left the country in position 9 among the 47 participating countries.

Costa Rica has managed to stay in the top 10 since 2004. The medal won by Leilani and the good participation of Emily Gussoni who positioned herself among the best 25 of 98 female competitors and Anthony Fillingim who managed to reach the fourth round and also positioned himself among the best 25 among 168 male participants helped keep the country in the top 10.

The competitor from France won gold in the Female category, and Johnny Corzo gave the gold medal to Mexico for the first time in this competition.

In the general ranking France took the first position. In the top 10 there were other four countries from the American continent, Mexico, USA, Peru and Brazil all ranked in higher positions than Costa Rica.

“It was one of the hardest world surfing games, definitely. Long days of competition and forced long breaks because of the lack of adequate waves, affected us and everyone else. We have to be very proud of the team that gave its best effort in France, they kept fighting until the last minute and they worked together to achieve a good result”, said Jim Hogan, trainer of the National Surf Team.

Costa Rica Ranking Results in the last 11 world tournaments:

Ecuador 2004 – 9º
California 2006 – 8º
Portugal 2008 – 5º
Costa Rica 2009 – 6º
Perú 2010 – 10º
Panamá 2011 – 9º
Panamá 2013 – 7º
Perú 2014 – 4º
Nicaragua 2015 – 1º
Costa Rica 2016 – 5º
Francia 2017 – 9º