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The light of Playa Cardiel is beautiful in the morning.
Near the center of Mar del Plata, a few meters from the water and near the breakwater, Lucas Rubiño and his collaborators prepare their wooden hut to receive the students of the Mardelsurf School, an NGO and surf training center that is a pioneer in accessibility. in Argentina, which has just turned 20 years old.
While the helpers rake the sand and arrange the wooden paths, Lucas finishes his latest creation: an old surfboard for practicing on land.
To the hull part, he put some old car shock absorbers with a drill;
These are nailed to the sand and hold the board.
The idea is to stand there and practice your balance before entering the sea.
On one side, the boards and wetsuits are waiting.
Like many stories, this one began at those crossroads between chance and necessity.
More than two decades ago, Rubiño was a professional surfer - he achieved the title of Argentine champion -, with sponsors who supported his career.
At a lunch that he shared with the owner of one of the brands, Lucas asked if he could invite the man's daughter, who always stayed under an umbrella due to a motor problem, to surf.
“The parents told me: 'But she can't walk.
She uses a walker.'
We put her in the water at knee height, I helped her stand on the board and when the foam of the wave came I held her and ran to her side holding her.
The joy that this experience generated in her and her family was the driving force behind everything that followed later,” says Rubiño in the morning of Mar del Plata.
The Mar del Plata Surf School, which offers surf lessons for disabled people.Diego Izquierdo
He founded an adapted surf school that had a multiplying effect in other parts of the country and decided to study Special Education.
“He did not know the world of disabilities nor was he prepared.
He wanted to, but that's not enough.
You have to have desire and knowledge.
There I met people with disabilities, their way of life, their fears... Now, when the students come, we chat with their families and professional environment to find out how they are.
We need that information.
And, in fact, many doctors recommend their patients come here,” he says.
Just as he is able to add car shock absorbers to a board, Lucas invented other adaptations to meet the needs of his students: boards with amphibious chairs, with handles, with postural chairs.
The idea is, even for a little while, that they can surf a wave;
living that mix of “joy, fear and achievement, all in one experience,” as South African surfer Shaun Tomson once defined it.
The effect on the spirits of these people and their families is something that Rubiño himself never ceases to surprise.
“The joy of surfing a wave lasts a little while.
But they have a virus left inside;
a good virus that exceeds sport, empowers them and, in many cases, changes their lives.
For example, surfing motivated some to start a guitar course, go to a dance or get married.
Many bonds are generated here, not only among the students, but also among the parents.
Families suffer a lot not because of the child's disability, but because they deal with the context, social works and bureaucracy.
Families know each other, help and motivate each other.
They write to me to congratulate me, but in reality the congratulations should be for the people who dared to do an activity that seemed impossible to them.”
In the morning, the school students arrive at Playa Cardiel.
Some are from Mar del Plata and other nearby cities on the Argentine coast, but the scope goes much further.
A few months ago, they made a tour from Jujuy to Tierra del Fuego.
The country from end to end, at lungs and without official support, with adapted sports workshops, accessibility talks and cardiopulmonary resuscitation courses.
One of the Mardelsurf School students is Florencia Deamiguez, who was losing her vision due to retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease.
“You see one hundred percent of things.
I'm a five,” says Deamiguez, who gives shiatsu massages.
The Mar del Plata Surf School, which offers surf lessons for disabled people.Diego Izquierdo
When she was a child and in her teens, Florencia used to go into the sea to surf.
But, over time, she lost her sight and abandoned the sport.
“I loved it, but I had to quit.
It was left unfinished,” she recalls.
She always went to the beach where Lucas set up his surf school and listened to the students' encouragement.
And she joined encouraged by the “professor.”
“Getting back to surfing was liberating and the school allowed me to find an alternative to my difficulty, as well as giving me confidence to go into the sea.
Lucas and I were learning together.
I conveyed to him what he needed, but there was no need to explain much,” he explains.
When she goes into the sea, Florencia uses a mask that protects her and is also a message to bathers.
“I have photophobia, but at the same time I have to tell others that I am surfing without seeing.
Lucas guides me with his voice, with words like right, left, flex your legs... I don't know how to explain the sensations to you.
When I'm bad, I go to the sea.
It's therapy for me.
Surfing makes me want to continue facing the things that happen to me every day.
You have a feeling of adrenaline that is not common outside the sea.
“Sport makes you grateful for being alive,” he says.
Due to a synovial sacoma, Oscar Reinoso lost a leg in 2008. That was not an impediment to practicing sports, such as taekwondo and adapted standing tennis;
He is even a member of the Para-Standing Tennis association.
Two years ago, he wanted to try surfing.
“But I didn't want to lie down on the board but rather do it standing up.
I don't like taking my leg out to move around.
The prosthesis is like the leg that I no longer have,” he says.
From left to right: Florencia Deamiguez, Lucas Rubiño, Martín Nicolás Tansola and Maximiliano Juarez.
Deamiguez and Tansola are students at the school, while Lucas is the creator of the surf school and Maximiliano is one of the teachers.Diego Izquierdo
At 62 years old, the man, who retired as an employee of the National Lottery, achieved it.
And he remembers that first time as a kind of baptism in the sea.
“Lucas took me to the beach.
He told me: 'Stand on the board.
You're sure?'
I grabbed his shoulders, put my tail back, my arms outstretched.
He counted to three and dropped the board.
Imagine my happiness.
Imagine everything that surfing entails: entering the sea, filtering the waves, paddling, using your arms... Now I am an independent surfer because I am capricious when I set my mind to something.
It gives me tremendous happiness,” says Reinoso, who has a tattoo of a wave, a sun and a surfboard on his wrist.
The joy that Deamiguez and Reinoso express for surfing has an impact on mental and emotional health, according to Augusto Sigismondi, a doctor who lives in Mar del Plata and who referred patients to Rubiño's surf school.
“It is a therapeutic activity that helps socialize and lower anxiety levels.
The effect is magnificent, as is music therapy and equine therapy.
The evolution of these patients in their therapies is much better.
They are more integrated, their vital capacity, mood and mental health improve.
Although the benefits have not yet been quantified in scientific studies, they are seen every day in the office,” he says.
This Mardel Surf school is, in some ways, an exception.
It is on a central beach and provides a safe environment with wooden paths for access by people with disabilities.
“If someone has to get there straining with a wheelchair or dying of heat, they don't do it in good conditions.
You can't expect that person to have fun and play.
Many of the city's beaches and buses do not have ramps for wheelchairs,” says Rubiño, who along with students and families fights to include their classes within the benefits of social works such as aquatic therapy.
When the sun is high and the beach begins to fill with people, Lucas tells about the festival they will hold for the school's 20 years, with an aquatic costume party and live music.
He says that, at times, he is not aware of the time that passed or of everything he did with the students - he estimates that about 16,000 spent - and his families.
He humbly says that he only gave some surfing knowledge.
And that he received a lot in return.
“I barely taught surfing technique a little.
They taught me to live differently.
That was what fueled the school for so long.”