ATR interview: ISA president Fernando Aguerre

(ATR) It is well true that the Covid tragedy continues to hit much of the world and opens questions about the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, although it is also true that not everyone comes out with a negative balance of the pandemic: surfing, surprisingly, has reasons to smile.

"We went out to paddle one wave and we got four," says a happy Fernando Aguerre during a phone interview with Around the Rings.

Aguerre, president of the International Surfing Association (ISA), is these days in El Salvador, venue of the last qualifier for Tokyo, but he is looking beyond. The Argentinian is thinking of Tahiti as the venue for Paris 2024, of the 2028 Games in the "capital of surfing, which is Los Angeles" and of a possible 2032 Games in Brisbane, Australia, another country that has surfing deeply rooted in its being. And he is also thinking about what he defines as "the global surfing explosion".

That "explosion" also includes El Salvador, the smallest country in Central America, a nation with a convulsive and violent history that wants to show another face: surfing.

"This tournament in El Salvador is a special tournament, it should have been held a year ago. And the special thing is that there has never been a tournament like this in El Salvador, a country that has magnificent waves, warm water waves and hot air, a paradise. Surfing is the vehicle chosen by the authorities of El Salvador to change the country and turn it into a tourist attraction. We already did a SUP [StandUp Paddle] World Cup in El Salvador, and it was wonderful".

The World Surfing Games in El Salvador will run until June 6, but even before the event ends, Aguerre is already scoring a victory: "This tournament is very special for me, because it contemplates gender equality and that there are as many women as men in the water".

"When I started surfing in Mar del Plata there were only one or two girls. This quota of 50 and 50 has produced something beautiful, in the World Cup in Miyazaki we had 42 percent, and now 48. We are already where we wanted to be. I am very excited and happy, surfing is on the right path".

The competition at the Salvadoran beaches of La Bocana and El Sunzal is also an opportunity for less powerful surfing countries to qualify their representatives for Tokyo. "The most powerful teams, the United States, Australia, France, Brazil and South Africa have already secured their places. This tournament allows those who finish 11th or 12th to reach the Games, because the quota of two athletes per country is already exhausted for those countries."

President of the ISA since 1994, Aguerre had for years between his eyebrows the idea to turn surfing into an Olympic sport, a project that for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of the '90s and early years of this century was little less than a delirium. Until the IOC understood that it had to change from the inside or they would change it from the outside - or worse, make it less and less relevant - and opened the doors to new sports, new audiences and younger generations.

"Surfing represents a gigantic change of direction in the Olympic program. Many years ago triathlon or beach volleyball came in, which were already existing sports in the program, in a way. Surfing is totally different, it's like skateboarding, and this masterstroke by President Bach represented the entry of three youth sports. One that is beach and ocean, one that is urban, like skateboarding, and one that is outdoors, sport climbing," Aguerre enthuses.

"The confirmation that it was the right decision is that for Paris 2024 the program once again includes surfing, sport climbing and skateboarding, but also break dance or free style. The sports that the Japanese had requested, which are baseball, softball and karate, are no longer on the program for Paris," adds the Argentine leader, who, when he looks at the horizon, sees far beyond the first wave.

"This opens a path for surfing in the Olympic world, because surfing was going to be only in Tokyo, and now it is already confirmed for Paris and in an incredible place like Teahupo'o, in Tahiti, which is part of France. One of the best waves in the world. And in 2028 the Games are in Los Angeles, the surfing capital of the world. Everyone knows that California is a symbol of surfing. And if the 2032 Games go to Brisbane we will be in another surfing capital. We go out to paddle one wave and we find four."

Aguerre, 63, is from Mar del Plata, Argentina's main tourist city and the center of local surfing. When in 1978 he founded the Argentinian Surf Association, it was an exoticism, a fun for hippies who looked to California. Today, surfing is a growing phenomenon in different Argentinian beaches, although still far from the massiveness of Australia, South Africa or California, as well as the presence of surfboards in Brazil or Peru.

The Argentinian believes that surfing is one of the sports of the future. And he draws on the Covid pandemic to develop his thesis.

"How difficult it is to live cooped up in cities and working at home has shown us that much of what we saw as desirable in modern life was not. In the past year in every country in the world there has been an explosion of outdoor sports and individual sports. Team and indoor sports are more complicated. In surfing you are in the sea, it's like going for a walk. There is an explosion of interest in cycling, surfing and SUP. The wetsuit factories in the world can't keep up with the demand."

It is, the ISA president implies, the silver lining in a world turned upside down.

"The pandemic has been a trigger for human beings to get closer to healthy living. We realized that it's good to work, it's good to make money and it's good to have a career, but also that life needs other things and many of those things we need we can't buy, they just require free time. There has been a revaluation of the family, of friendship, of all that we took for granted. This gives me a lot of hope, although I know that we are in a very difficult moment in the history of humanity."

Before the pandemic made its appearance, one of the recurring questions to the organizers of Tokyo 2020 was about Fukushima, about the consequences of the accident at the nuclear power plant of the same name following the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck the region in 2011. The decision by Japanese authorities to dump more than a million tons of water contaminated in the accident into the sea is resisted by many in Japan and the rest of the world, although the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), also directed by an Argentinian, Rafael Grossi, gave it a clean bill of health and deemed the procedure "safe".

"I am not very knowledgeable about the scientific part of what is being done. I would not like to give an opinion without being well informed," Aguerre cautiously responds. "Although it is true that as surfers we are always concerned about the quality of the water, anything that does harm to the water worries us. But civilization, or so-called civilization, does much more damage than Fukushima. We throw everything into the sea, which is huge, vast, but not infinite. Our way of acting is going to end up destroying the sea, and the day we destroy the sea we are going to end up destroying ourselves".

Without forgetting the debut of surfing in Tokyo, which will be held on the beaches of Chiba Prefecture, Aguerre allows himself to dream of much more and already imagines what the 16 Olympic days of Paris 2024 will be like in three years' time: something never seen before, he says.

"France is a huge country, it has parts in the Pacific, in the Caribbean, in the Indian Ocean and in the Atlantic. And Tahiti is part of Polynesia, which is where surfing originated. The IOC, Paris 2024 and the ISA decided that Tahiti was the right place, and I'm very excited," he says.

"I think it's going to showcase some spectacular surfing and surfing is going to produce one of the strongest ratings in the Olympic Movement. Think about this: when the day is over in Paris they're going to show you what's happening at that very moment in Tahiti, which is on the other side of the world."

Written and reported by Sebastian Fest

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