Once the gastrointestinal fireworks started, it transformed a Rio de Janeiro hostel into an over-the-top scene from “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”
At the ISA World Junior Surfing Championship, a teen from Team Spain vomited on the wall in the middle of the night in a failed sprint to a shared bathroom. Another followed. The of Team USA soon were clutching stomachs.
Whispers floated that competitors from and other countries were moaning and groaning, too.
In the middle of one of the biggest international competitions of their lives, an ailment began toppling some of the planet’s best young surfers like bowling pins on a mid-pocket strike.
The medical sleuthing began.
Was it the travel? The cramped quarters? Food poisoning? The runoff from city streets that torpedoed water quality like it did at the 2016 Olympics?
“There were 12 beds in a room,” said Titus Santucci, a member of Team USA from Encinitas. “Everyone had been traveling and used the same bathrooms. And the water was kind of gross. The sewage system was not the best. It was pretty gnarly.
“Before one of my heats, I had 102-degree fever and was feeling super sick.”
Team USA won a silver medal anyway, finishing within striking range of gold-grabbing Brazil, while navigating illness, fickle Atlantic Ocean waves and competitors from 45 countries. The event Nov. 24-Dec. 3 featured 356 competitors.
They were, in surf speak, stoked.
“To share that trip with everyone,” Oceanside’s Lucas Owston said, “was super special.”
Surfers came everywhere from land-locked nations like the Czech Republic and Hungary to water-soaked destinations Tahiti and Barbados. Canada, a country with temperatures around 16 degrees at the time the event closed, entered a group. A team from war-torn Ukraine toed up boards, as well.
This was a collective group that had experienced wild differences in weather and water conditions around the globe.
The U.S. shredded, as they say.
“I had never been to one before, so I was excited to meet new people,” said Cole McCaffray of Encinitas. “It was awesome to see a new country and be with some of the best surfers my age from around the world.
“There’s definitely a lot of pressure when you’re surfing for Team USA. Everyone wants you to perform and you want to do well.”
The waves underwhelmed. Normally, surfers stare down far bigger swells at a world championship. Everyone had to find a way to do more with less.
When life hands you lemons for water, you carve up lemonade.
“The waves were really bad the whole event,” Owston said. “They were really small. It was a challenge.”
Waves provided a paint brush for elite surfers, the palette on which the best mine for inspiration while fueling medal-chasing runs.
Potential distractions, though, extended beyond the beach.
“A couple nights we’d hear gunshots go off,” Santucci said. “My buddy from the Finland team was having dinner and cops pulled over a motorcycle and they drew all these guns on them. You definitely got the feeling when you were out at night it was a little bit sketchy.
“But it was cool to make the whole trip. That experience is worth more than the medal.”
The payoff came in meeting and mingling with contemporaries from all corners of the map, representing the U.S. and gaining a better understanding a place more than 6,200 miles away on the other side of the equator.
That’s a lot of takeaway for a trio of 18-year-olds.
“And they had had these pop-up acai stands,” Santucci said. “Those were pretty good.”
So there’s that.
Anything and everything that stayed down quickly became a bonus as the team battled the sickness that swept through. They pounded water and coconut water. Advil became essential.
“It was definitely a tricky situation,” McCaffray said. “I felt super dead. I started throwing up 3 in the morning, so was feeling the full force of it when I was getting willing to surf. You had to push through.
“I know they thought it was the (ocean) water, but I honestly don’t know. I’ve surfed Baja and Imperial Beach when there’s runoff and never really gotten sick. So who knows?”
Owston dipped into the murky water for perspective.
“It was really hard, but I wasn’t the only one dealing with it,” he said. “So many teams were sick. So you had to have the mindset to keep focused on the task at hand. I think we did that very well.”
In the end, all found a silver lining.
The journey was sick, in more ways than one.
