It has always been normal for the government to not support Latin American surfing in any way. Even though the region has not stopped producing talents that have brought all kinds of trophies to all countries, unfortunately the sport in Latin America is football and a few other things.

The Olympic and Pan-American boom and some good management inevitably pushed sports departments to include surfing in their budgets. A few days ago, at DUKE we published every peso that each Latin American surf federation receives annually from the government..

It seemed like very little to me. Of course, what we have now is better than what we had a few years ago, which, as was said, was practically nothing.

Maybe with the exception of Peru, which not only pays for everything for its athletes but is also building a high-performance center that will cost eight million dollars that will remain for all the generations to come… Doing some simple math, standing in 2018, a surfer can get to Tokyo 2020 and Lima 2019 by entering the CT ($30.000 in expenses for a year on the QS tour multiplied by the number of athletes who are thought to be able to get there), through the World Surfing Games (taking a team is $50.000) or going to the Pan American Surfing Championship in Lima ($20.000 in tickets).

The sum of this alone (without considering administrative salaries, championship organization or other points that generate development of the sport from the roots) already far exceeds the budget of all the federations and without the support of private sponsors of the surfers and often of their families, the number of Latin athletes and teams on the tour and in the world and Pan American championships would not be possible.

We must then consider the figure of the surfer and his role as a high-performance athlete representing a country in an Olympic sport, an example for his society, for children and young people, and ask ourselves whether the 100.000 to 200.000 that most "developed" federations receive do justice to the level and results of these surfers.

I don't think so.