Competitions in the sport of surfing, governed by the International Surfing Association (ISA), have been held at two editions of the Summer Olympic Games. First selected as one of the discretionary sports at the 2020 and 2024 games, surfing will be inducted as one of the mandatory sports at the 2028 games. Athletes compete in the discipline of shortboard surfing, which is the sole event in the sport at the Olympics. The United States have won the most gold medals (2), while Brazil have won the most medals overall (3).
In September 2015, surfing was included in a shortlist along with baseball, softball, karate, skateboarding, and sport climbing to be considered for inclusion in the 2020 Summer Olympics.[1] In June 2016, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that they would support the proposal to include all of the shortlisted sports in the 2020 Games.[2] Finally, on August 3, 2016, all five sports (counting baseball and softball together as one sport) were approved for inclusion in the 2020 Olympic program.[3]
One of the biggest obstacles to surfing being included in the Olympics for many years was a landlocked country hosting the games which would make surfing events difficult to stage, and another one was that drowning is one of the big risks in surfing, and the IOC was less likely to take high liabilities in the event of a death.[4]
