Lower Trestles will host Olympic surfing at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, and after months of institutional uncertainty, USA Surfing is officially the organization that’ll run it.
Gene Sykes, board chair of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, made it formal this week: USA Surfing has been designated as the National Governing Body for Olympic surfing in the United States. That title matters. Without it, an organization can’t field a team, negotiate with the LA28 organizing committee, or do much of anything at the Olympic level.
The road to this announcement was messy.
US Ski and Snowboard, the Utah-based snow sports organization, had been pursuing control of the U.S. Olympic surf team as part of a bid to expand into action sports. Surfers weren’t having it. One detail that got a lot of traction during the dispute: a promotional image from the Utah group appeared to show a surfer standing backwards on the board. USA Surfing’s supporters pointed to it as proof that the snow sports contingent didn’t know what they were trying to run. US Ski and Snowboard eventually dropped the bid, as LAist reported.
This week’s announcement closed the chapter.
What makes USA Surfing’s return significant is the context behind it. The organization lost its National Governing Body status after a 2019 audit revealed serious financial and accounting problems. Losing that status isn’t a bureaucratic inconvenience. It’s a full institutional collapse, and USA Surfing had to rebuild credibility over years before the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee would trust it again with Olympic oversight.
Sykes said the turnaround held up under scrutiny. “Surfing is a sport that has deep roots in Southern California and will no doubt be a highlight of the LA28 games,” he said. “We look forward to a positive and collaborative working relationship as we deliver on the promise of LA28 and beyond.” He specifically credited USA Surfing’s “new leadership and new approach” as the basis for restoring the committee’s confidence.
The competition venue itself doesn’t need much selling. Lower Trestles sits just south of San Clemente, deep in Orange County, and it’s considered one of the best surf breaks on the planet. Hollow rights, punchy lefts, a consistent swell window that holds up through summer. It’s a wave that demands precision, which is why elite surfers have chased it for decades and why it was always the obvious choice once Los Angeles locked in the 2028 Games.
That said, Lower Trestles didn’t get to this moment without fights of its own. The Surfrider Foundation spent years defending the break from a toll road proposal that would have cut through the watershed feeding the reef. The road didn’t get built, the break survived, and now it’s an Olympic venue. California’s surf community didn’t just inherit that outcome. They worked for it.
There’s a through-line in all of this that’s hard to ignore. Southern California gets the Games. The surfing goes to a legendary Orange County break. The team is run by people who actually know the sport. It’s not a tidy narrative by accident. It’s what happens when the right institutions hold together long enough to get the job done, and when the wrong ones can’t convincingly explain why a surfer would ride facing backwards.
For the LA28 organizing committee, having a stable NGB in place matters operationally. Venue logistics, athlete qualification, broadcast coordination. None of that works cleanly when there’s a governance dispute sitting at the center of the process.
USA Surfing’s 2019 collapse was real, and the comeback required to get back here was not short or easy. The organization had to fix its finances, bring in credible leadership, and convince the Olympic and Paralympic Committee that it could be trusted with something as visible as a home Games competition. It did that. Sykes said so publicly.
Lower Trestles in 2028, with a governing body that actually knows how to run a surf competition. That’s where this landed.