Harish Muthu and Kishore Kumar created history by progressing to the quarterfinals of the Surfing for Asian Games 2026 in the Men’s Open and U-18 categories respectively.
The competition which is a qualifier for the Asian Games 2026 is being held at Thulusdhoo in Maldives had eight Indians in the fray across four categories.
Harish eventually finished third in the quarterfinal with a score of 6.76, behind Joi Satriawan of Indonesia and Kaisei Adachi of Japan who finished first and second respectively. Earlier he finished second in Heat 1 of Round 3 with a score of 8.43 with two best scores of 5.33 and 3.10 in four waves to qualify for the quarterfinal.
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Kishore booked his quarterfinal spot in the U-18 category by achieving a score of 14.33, the highest by any surfer in Round 3. He scored a two waves score of 6.83 and 7.5 to finish on top of Heat 2 of Round 3, which is also the highest score of all the Indian surfers in the championship so far.
Kishore will be up against Chinese Taipei’s John Chan and Maldives’ Sayyid Salahudheen in Heat 3 of the quarterfinals on Friday.
“I am proud of my performance in the Championships even though I couldn’t make it into the semis. This was a great experience for me to compete amongst the top ranked Asian surfers and I have learned a lot from this competition,” Harish said.
“It’s exhilarating to see these young Indian surfers not just compete but dominate on the international stage. Our ultimate goal is to bring medals home to India through surfing. What’s even more inspiring is that every one of these surfers comes from the fishing communities of Tamil Nadu, proving that with passion and dedication, the sky is the limit,” said Arun Vasu, President of the Surfing Federation of India.
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