Callinan was in action on day one of the event, in which surfers need to compete to qualify for the Tokyo Games.

Julian Wilson and Owen Wright, who are also surfing in El Salvador, are set to represent Australia in the men's division at Tokyo. They provisionally qualified after finishing as the nation's highest-ranked competitors on the 2019 World Surf League championship tour before the 2020 Olympics were postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each nation can have a maximum of two male and two female surfers competing at Tokyo. Callinan, who finished equal 14^th with countryman Jack Freestone on the 2019 CT, will be the men's reserve.

Callinan faces two-time world champion and CT leader Gabriel Medina in the second repechage round at the ISA Surfing Games after winning his first-round heat and finishing third in the second round on day one.

He finished the heat with scores of 7.67 and 6.07 for a 13.74 best two-wave total to win round one against Edito Alcala jnr (8.84) of the Philippines, Sweden's Cristian Portelli (6.26) and Saori Perez (7.14) of the Dominican Republic.

In round two, Callinan (9.96) was third to Spain's Aritz Aranburu (11.67) and Ireland's Gearoid McDaid (10).

Stephanie Gilmore and Sally Fitzgibbons are Australia's female qualifiers for Tokyo and they are competing in El Salvador along with Nikki Van Dijk.

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