Has Australia picked the wrong Olympic surfing team?

Surfing Australia stuck with the 2019 world rankings to choose its team for the 2021 Olympics. Are the wrong surfers going to Tokyo? The current world rankings say yes.

Morgan Cibilic in his Heat 4 of of the Rip Curl Narrabeen Classic. Picture: Getty Images

Newcastle’s brilliant World Surf League rookie Morgan Cibilic beat Hawaii’s two-time world champion John John Florence for the second time in as many events on Monday to fuel the growing belief that Australia is sending the wrong boardriding team to the Tokyo Olympics.

Surfing Australia stuck with the 2019 rankings to choose its Games’ squad despite the 12-month postponement of the event. Australia’s representatives will be Owen Wright, Julian Wilson, Steph Gilmore and Sally Fitzgibbons.

They’re four supremely accomplished, experienced and successful surfers, especially the seven-time world champion Gilmore. But the men in particular have been off the pace on the world championship tour this season. On the current standings, Wilson, Wright and Fitzgibbons would not be on the plane to Japan.

Gilmore and Fitzgibbons reached the quarter-finals of the Narrabeen Classic on Monday to suggest they were Tokyo-worthy. Yet Australia’s highest-ranked female is still Tyler Wright. She missed the squad because illness and injury sidelined her from the 2019 season. The two-time world champion won the Pipe Masters in December to be the world number one but bombed out of the Narrabeen Classic in the round of 16 after another early elimination from the Newcastle Cup.

Cibilic would be getting an Olympic tracksuit and wetsuit if the selection criteria wasn’t two years old. The 21-year-old is smashing Wilson and Wright on the rankings, and tellingly he beat Wilson when they went head-to-head at Narrabeen. He wasn’t even on the tour in 2019. He roared into the quarter-finals at Narrabeen by taking out Hawaii’s revered Florence – an almost unbackable prospect for the Olympic podium – by 15.77 points to 11.77.

“I’m pretty psyched,” Cibilic said. “Woo! The judges have shown they want commitment so I’m definitely psyched to be giving them that.”

The men’s event at Narrabeen was blown wide open when Brazil’s dynamite world champion Italo Ferreira was eliminated by American Connor Coffin. To say Ferreira was displeased by the judges would be an understatement. In the locker room, he jumped on his board in rage, smashing it in half, after going down by 11.47 points to 10.67.

Gilmore and Fitzgibbons progressed to the last eight as Mick Fanning claimed the beach break at Narrabeen was the sort of fluky little wave that made Gilmore doubt herself.

It’s also the sort of fluky little wave expected for Tsurigasaki Beach at the Olympics, and the sort of fluky little wave on which the 33-year-old Gilmore was stunned by Queensland’s 23-year-old Isabella Nichols at the Newcastle Cup a couple of weeks ago.

“If you go through all the stats, Steph has always struggled in beach breaks,” Fanning told the World Surf League’s Getting Heated podcast. “Is it a motivational thing? Not sure. I sort of felt like it happened when she ran into Caroline (Marks) at the (2019) Quiksilver Pro. She just seemed rattled.

“And I felt like Isabella did the exact same thing. Put some pressure on her early and Steph didn’t compose herself to bring herself back. She’s an incredible surfer, she’s the G.O.A.T of the women’s tour, by far, but I feel like sometimes she gets lost in the moment and she doesn’t back herself in those situations.”

Gilmore swept past Saige Erickson by 13 points to 9.83 while surfing the inferior right-hand waves better than the Ameerican capitalised on the steeper and more points-laden lefts.

The 30-year-old Fitzgibbons looked to have been out-surfed by 20-year compatriot Macy Callaghan in the round of 16, but the judges gave her the nod by 14.1 points to 13.73. Callaghan was within her rights to think she had been short-changed and underscored. Wright was beaten by 13.83 points to 12.97 in the dying minutes of her round-of-16 heat against Frenchwoman Johanne Defay.

Fitzgibbons will next face Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb. Gilmore has started the season with consecutive quarter-final placings. She’ll face combative American Courtney Conlogue to go one better at Narrabeen.

“It’s good to be consistent but not too consistent, you know?” she grinned. “I really want to break through the quarter-finals and get to the semis.”

The 32-year-old Wilson and 31-year-old Wright both lost in the third round to likely fall outside the top 20 in the world. World number four Ryan Callinan was eliminated in the round of 32 by countryman Reef Heazlewood, but world number seven Cibilic proved unstoppable. Both Callinan and Cibilic are in the hunt for the top-five world championship shootout at California’s Lower Trestles in September.