Giuliana Pasquali
07/25/2021 6:00 AM
Clarín.com
sports
Updated 07/25/2021 7:37 AM
The waves of Tsurigasaki beach dance and the Argentine
Fernando Aguerre's
smile grows larger
. It is still difficult for him to understand that, when his compatriot and pupil
Leandro Usuna
laid his board on the water, the dream he inherited from the Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku came true: it
is the first time in history that surfing is part of the Olympic Games
. The result matters little to him. "We worked more than 20 years for this and the door never opened, until finally they gave us the possibility," he explains to
Clarín
through tears.
Aguerre grew up rowing between challenges and prohibitions.
He was a purrete when, in 1978, the military dictatorship persecuted and punished more than 200 surfers for practicing
a discipline that was prohibited
.
And, without fear of reprisals, he decided to create the first
Surf Association
: by 1994 he was already president of the International Surfing Association (ISA) and, years later, he managed to transform it into a
Pan-American (Lima 2019) and Olympic (Tokyo) sport. 2020)
.
"One in life - he describes - has many objectives, and one of mine was to propose surfing as a vehicle to improve the world. Not for nothing do people who go to the sea leave renewed."
-Do you take more dimension than what you achieved?
-No,
I am not seduced by looking back
.
I am not seduced by looking in the rear-view mirror to see how the kilometers go by: I like to look ahead even more even when I am not driving.
And every morning I wake up thanking the world for being alive.
Leandro Usuna, the Argentine representative in Tokyo.
Photo: REUTERS / Lisi Niesner
The 63-year-old from Mar del Plata, creator of the Ala Moana and Reef brands, is the
first Argentine leader
to promote the presence of a discipline in the Olympic Games: "My brother, who is a very methodical guy, in 2016 did the calculation and said that I
had put in 12,000 hours of my life to put surfing in the Games
. I worked 12,000 hours of my life for free ... And you have to add a few years to that. Some think I'm crazy. Sometimes I think so too, ha " .
-But joy is priceless ...
-It's very nice, because it's not mine: this belongs to all of us who surf, to the thousands of volunteers, my family, my friends ...
And also to those who challenged me by telling me that it was impossible
.
I always thought that "impossible" is a word that we use to avoid putting in a serious effort, not putting grudges on it, not putting passion into it and not working hard.
Most of the impossible are possible.
-How was the process?
-All the great evolutions of humanity come in three stages that are always repeated.
First, the impossibility.
You start talking about the impossible idea and then you work to make it inevitable.
Duke, the Hawaiian, told the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that he wanted surfing to be Olympic, and his idea was impossible for 80 years.
I arrived and said: "Let's see if we can make it inevitable
.
"
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by fernando aguerre (@fernandoaguerre)
-I take time...
-I worked all the angles you can imagine: I went to surf with different kings, to speak with ministers, with princes, with journalists, with people from all over the world ...
And I infected everyone with my passion
. One day a new president came to the IOC and said: "I want to do what has not been done until now." And he opened the door to new sports for us.
In 2015, the list of disciplines that implored to be Olympians was 26, then they became eight and, finally, five:
the five today compete in Tokyo
. "Japan," Fernando adds, "wanted two: karate to win medals and baseball, the team sport par excellence there. Phenomenon. And for the world's youth?
Surfing
came in
, the coolest sport on the beach and in the sea; the
skate
, urban coolest sport, and
sport climbing
, the coolest outdoor sport. "
Aguerre, who describes himself as a "practical idealist," learned to give the day his maternal grandmother pledged her months' savings on a jacket that she later gave him as a gift.
"She didn't have a good financial time, but she did everything to buy it for me. I told her I was crazy and she explained that
giving is much more important than receiving
, because receiving is nice, but giving you have a much better chance of becoming a better person" , remember.
Today is his motto for life.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by fernando aguerre (@fernandoaguerre)
-You applied it to life: you are giving surfing part of what you received from that sport ...
-
Surfing gave me everything and what I do with surfing is giving what I received
. In May I turned 27 as president of the ISA and I never got paid for what I did, because it is a pleasure. Today I see how kids from all over the world changed their lives and filled me up. If that's not happiness, I don't know where it is. It happens that materially I worked many years in the world related to the beach ...
Success gives you an obligation which is to give
, because to receive there are many factors. And I give everything I received.