French Surfers Defend Home Sandbar, Hold Off Kelly Slater to Win 2024 Quiksilver Festival

Though it’s not marketed as such, Jeremy Flores and contest director Miky Picon may have created a competitive surfing time machine with the Quiksilver Festival. Thousands of live spectators, raucous late-night parties and dirty jokes are followed by early morning heats over sand at Hossegor. This could be the ASP in the 1980s.

Except the format is decidedly not ASP/WSL. Over six sessions, each surfer kept one score from heats with varying criteria such as best turn, best air, best barrel and best/most expressive twin fin maneuver. The team of two with the highest overall scores wins. Magnifique , no ?

After four days of “competition” Frenchmen Joan Duru and Marc Lacomare successfully demonstrated their mastery of their local sandbar and were deemed the winners of the 2024 Quiksilver Festival. They had to leapfrog the team of Flores and Kelly Slater, who led going into the last day.

Far from perfect, the last session (theme: Best Combo) took place at Les Gardians, the same stretch of Hossegor that Andy and Bruce Irons shared that famous final in 2004. The Quik Fest final day was not huge but not exactly small. There were sections for everyone to hit, and that they did.

The money-making moment was the fourth heat when Bobby Martinez, Lacomare, and Slater were all in the water together. The Frenchmen belted and launched from the punchy lefts, ultimately getting a 5.93 and the top spot on the leaderboard. Flores (who won the event last year with Michel Bourez) surfed later in the day but came up just short of the 6.31 he needed. Victory to his countrymen.

A few things to note: Jackson Dorian and Noah Beschen went ballistic in the air. Lungi Slabb and Hughie Vaughan should be applauded for getting BTS for BaguetteTV between surfing heats. It was amazing to see Bobby and Clay Marzo on the same team (and even held the lead at one point)! And at this rate, Kelly Slater will never officially retire.