Costa Rica's team for the upcoming World Surfing Games in Jacó was announced Wednesday. The team will feature the country's biggest names in surf, including Carlos "Cali" Muñoz and the decorated McGonagle siblings.
The 2016 National Surf Circuit kicked off this past weekend in Playa Cocles on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast with a panoply of talented young athletes competing on over 8-foot-high waves and in occasional downpours of rain.
It was a historic 2015 for Costa Rican surfers, who won an ISA World Championship and finished a national-best eighth at the ultra-competitive Junior World Championships.
Surfers León Glatzer and Noe Mar McGonagle will be able to avoid Costa Rica's notoriously bad roads and congested traffic with Nature Air flights as they travel to some of the world's best surfing destinations.
Costa Rica's Noe Mar McGonagle and Carlos Muñoz came up just short against surfing's biggest figures Wednesday at the Vans World Cup at Sunset Beach in Hawaii.
Jason Torres of Jacó won this past weekend's Billabong Fest in his home surf. With the win, he occupies No. 8 in the Association of Latin American Professional Surfers (ALAS) rankings.
Noe Mar McGonagle ripped off an impressive 9.27 ride at the World Surf League's Allianz Billabong Pro Cascais on Wednesday to win his heat and advance to the second round of the tournament.
Though once the stepchild of more popular and better-funded sports, surfing is finally claiming its spot in Costa Rica thanks to an ultra-talented generation of young surfers.
