SAN DIEGO (NEWS 8) — It's a competition that proves you can overcome just about anything.
Surfers are competing in the Stance International Surfing Association World Adaptive Surfing Championship this week at La Jolla Shores.
The world's best adaptive surfers are in La Jolla to represent their countries.
Jesse Billauer will be one of 15, representing the USA.
"When I was 17, about a month before turning professional, I was surfing up at my home in Malibu and I ended up falling, hit my head on a shallow sandbar and I broke the sixth vertebrae in my neck and became a quadriplegic,” said Billauer.
More than 120 surfers from 24 countries are vying for gold medals in the 4th World Adaptive Surfing Championship.
Wednesday was day one of the five-day event and started with an opening day ceremony.
Each team paraded down La Jolla Shores with their country's flag and each brought sand from their home beaches and poured it into a tank.
"It’s like our torch, our flame, but ours is just sand,” said ISA President Fernando Aguerre
It signifies the coming together of the world in peace through surfing.
"All these people have a lot of difficulties in their lives and to overcome them, not only in their regular lives, but to become world-class surfing athletes is amazing,” said Aguerre.
Joshua Loya has been visually impaired his whole life.
"[I] had a retinal condition and lost the vision in my right eye [at] two or three years old and in my left eye completely at 15,” said Loya. “So, early ‘96, that was the last time I saw."
That didn’t stop him from surfing.
His coach Pat verbally guides him in onto the waves.
“I just won the U.S. Open Adaptive Surfing Champion in 2018 [in the] visually impaired division earlier this year in October,” said Loya.
To say these men and women are incredible is an understatement.
"Get inspired, come on out here and see that life is beautiful and tomorrow is never guaranteed. Be thankful for what you have,” said Billauer.
This year 37 of the participants are women - twice as many as last year - and for the first time there is a division for visually impaired female surfers.