After the second round, Wajda, Glatzer and McGonagle look strong for their second Olympic ticket.

Leon Glatzer unsettles Kanoa Igarashi with his characteristic air.

Igarashi has long cast a shadow over Waida’s Olympic history. Surf City El Salvador wasn’t the only place he beat Indonesian surfers to earn a ticket to Paris 2024. At the Tokyo 2020 Games, they defeated him in the third match and won the silver medal.

But their fortunes reversed in Puerto Rico.

While Wajda celebrated making it to the third round, Igarashi faced some brutal heat against South Africa’s top surfers on the Championship Tour. Jordy Smith And Tokyo 2020 Olympic athletes Leon Glatzer.

Smith led his heat with an overall score of 15.27, the highest of the day among men, while Germany’s Glatzer used his signature air to push Igarashi into the third spot.

“It was quite an overlapping heat in the second round alone. Just competing with Jordy, he’s been one of my idols since I was a kid. I basically watched him before freesurfing. ,” Glatzer told Olympic.com. “It was really hot.”

Other Tokyo 2020 athletes are also one step closer to earning their second Olympic ticket. Ramzi Boukiam, Daniela Rosas, Dominic Varonaand Leilani McGonagle.

Costa Rica’s McGonagle gets off to an unlucky start in women’s round 2 against Tokyo 2020 bronze medalist Amuro Tsuzuki. This young surfer wiped out on two heavy waves, but then managed to get his rhythm back and he finished in first place.

“After two wipeouts, I paddled back, caught my breath and said to myself, ‘Okay, this isn’t what we came all this way for,’ and I regained momentum,” McGonagle said. told Olympic.com.