By Li Ying, Li Yue
SAN DIEGO, the United States, May 26 (Xinhua) -- Surfing's world governing body is trying to make the world a better place through the sport, Fernando Aguerre, the president of the International Surfing Association (ISA), said on Friday.
"The ocean is probably one of the very few places left that is free to everybody," Aguerre, told Xinhua News Agency in an exclusive interview at his house in San Diego, a sunshine city of California.
"The vision of the ISA is to make the world a better place through surfing so we can connect." he said, who started to work with the IOC to get surfing accepted by the Olympics since 1995.
One hundred and ninety surfboards collected in his house, some are hand-made from Hawaii, some are from the 19 Century. Aguerre told Xinhua he started to collect these boards about 25 years ago, and is exuberant about every bit of surfing.
The love of surfing has been engraved in Aguerre's mind since the 61-year-old Argentinean was a little child, and now he is dedicated to bringing more people to the ocean.
"ISA is focused on helping to take surfing to as many countries as possible around the world, because there are millions and millions of people living by the ocean but they do not know the ocean is a perfect playground ready for surfers," Aguerre said.
According to the website SurferToday, it is estimated to have 23 million surfers worldwide, less than 10 percent of people playing football. But the sport is on the rise. According to ISA, the figure is expected to reach 50 million globally by 2020.
Signs of this ocean sport seeking to attract more people around the world could be seen from the Olympics. This March, surfing has been officially admitted into the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Games program.
"It really took a lot of effort," Aguerre said, "I think bringing youth sports to the Olympic movement will make the Games even more vital."
Moreover, Aguerre thinks this inclusion brings more opportunities to develop this sport especially for countries and regions like China where surfing is in a nascent stage.
"Although the large majority of surfers are from Australia, Brazil, and the U.S., the Olympic surfing competition will be truly universal," Aguerre said.
According to the Tokyo 2020 Qualification System, there will be 20 male and 20 female short-board surfing athletes competing for the first-ever Olympic medals. The Chinese national surfing team was founded in 2017 with the "first generation of Chinese surfers", consisting of around 20 men and women, coached by Peter Townend.
With the equally assigned slots for every participating country and region and the proper resources and support allocated for surfing, Aguerre is optimistic about the Chinese surfers in the sport's Olympic debut two years later.
He told Xinhua he does not have any doubts that in another two or four years, it would be some really good Chinese surfers.
"There will be a chance," he said, adding that the competition is just a part of the sport.
To Aguerre, surfing is a life style, and it always means "nature", "happiness" and "excitement".
However, the barriers preventing some places from promoting surfing are not solely physical. They are cultural, too. Although China has the stretches of coastline, surfing is not part of the Chinese cultural gene although the country has a long coastline and millions of people living alongside it.
As for the reason, Aguerre thinks Chinese are hardworking nation and people, but surfing is the opposite, a recreational activity. To develop the surf beach culture, there need to be more beachgoers in China.
"You have the coastline, then you have the equipment already been manufactured in China and exported all over the world, and you have a huge amount of young people that want to go surfing. You already have the great beaches in China, just need to use them," Aguerre said.
"The culture of surfing comes from being on the beach, going to the ocean, swimming and understanding the ocean, studying the waves, and then a lot of that happens as a consequence of going to the beach."
Aguerre first went to China in 2012 for the first ISA China Cup, and was impressed by the waves and landscape where it is good for driving surfboard.
"It is just taking this surfing culture and sport forward to new places and letting people interpret surfing according to their own culture." he said.
He hopes the Olympic surfing will excite the Chinese people to get involved with surfing and enjoy their oceans and the waves all over China.
"Part of the surfing is to bring people together without different social, racial, linguistic, religious differences, and that is a true universal gift for all countries and all peoples of the world," Auguerra said.
