“We are looking at a natural beach for surfing. Japan has a number of strong surfing areas and strong existing surfing culture,” McConnell told Magic Seaweed.

While the Land of The Rising Sun is no Hawaii when it comes to size and frequency of waves, there are already a number of World Qualifying Series events held in Japan – in areas such as Chiba, a city just 40km south-east of Tokyo.

Chiba has a number of consistent, powerful beach breaks popular with Japanese surfers and pros alike. It works best from August through to October during typhoon season, which would hypothetically work out quite nicely for the Olympic Games.

Right now, we know that there will be 20 male and 20 female surfers selected for the Olympic surfing events.

Kelly Slater has already spoken out supporting the introduction of surfing to the Olympics – saying he would be honoured to compete himself – alongside Julian Wilson and Gabriel Medina.

The question on everyone’s lips however is would this rule out landlocked countries for future Olympic bids? While wave pools would offer a mechanical consistency that you can’t get in the ocean and ironing out any scoring discrepancies, the WSL events have been faring fine on natural waves since, well…. forever.

No one is quite sure of the answer, and wave pools haven’t been totally ruled out of the equation, either way it’s an intriguing new prospect for surfing.

You Might Also Like:

Amazing News! World’s First Big Wave Surfing Competition For Women Announced

Surfing: How You Think You Look Vs. How You Actually Look