President Fernando Aguerre discussed the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games on a virtual show entitled "State of Olympic Surfing" ©Getty Images

International Surfing Association (ISA) President Fernando Aguerre discussed the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games on a virtual show entitled "State of Olympic Surfing".

ISA organised the one-hour virtual show, which was streamed live on social media. 

It was hosted by Chris Cote, who was joined by Aguerre and a number of surfers, including Italo Ferreira and Tatiana-Weston Webb of Brazil, Caroline Marks and Brett Simpson of the United States, Sofia Mulanovich of Peru, Ramzi Boukhiam of Morocco and Anat Lelior of Israel. 

Topics ranged from Olympic surfing to the ISA World Surfing Games in Japan, with Aguerre discussing the postponement of Tokyo 2020. 

The Games were moved to July 23 to August 8 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than four million people worldwide, resulting in more than 278,000 deaths. 


"This unexpected tsunami came, started to build up sometime in early 2020, and then you could hear the rumble, it was starting to get out of control, and then eventually completely out of control," Aguerre said.

"There was an attempt to wait and see if there was a fast cure, or a way to contain it, but it was obvious that we were not going to contain this, and if there was something that could not be contained, it was people getting infected.

"Maybe the fatality rate will go down, but nobody knows how many people are infected.

"It means nobody wants to fly on planes, no one wants to stay in hotels, no one in surfing wants to compete in a competition with thousands of people.

"So, with that in mind, it was obvious that the International Olympic Committee made the decision, which was that the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games will be held in 2021.

"The name is the same, the aim is the same, everything is the same."

ISA are hoping to hold the World Surfing Games in El Salvador later this year. 

Competition was scheduled to take place this month, but had to be postponed due to the pandemic. 

Action in El Salvador is still set to act as a qualifier, with ten Olympic places available in total.