By Antonio Sotillo* 

There is very little support for surfing federations in Latin America. Only those who have worked with public funds know how delicate and formal the process is to support any money received by the government, but also only those who have had a successful job as sports leaders and in a public way can realize that this picture is a needle in the haystack of a nation's budget for sports.

The article published a few days ago about the money that Latin American federations receive from the government (see here) He revealed that many times what we believe is not what we see and that behind the scenes, there are many people reaching into their own pockets to be able to afford a trip, an important participation of their national team and even to pay debts left by the previous administration.

I think all this serves to open our eyes, to know that we still have a long way to go on the Olympic route.

We can make a book out of this picture, but that is not my intention because it would be a kind of fiction novel, but I will give my opinion because I know the region very well for more than 20 years in Latin sports and therefore it gives me the opportunity to express myself with logic and analysis.

It is important to highlight that the countries that have achieved important things in the last three years are Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Peru. In a previous column I mentioned a formula for success in becoming a world power (PM = Fields + Talents + Organization2) if you look at the organization squared, it comes from the actions of its leadership, which, together with economic support, will definitely lead to important results. These countries stand out in the individual and team tables of ISA, PASA, ALAS, WSL and Olympic events, such as South American Beach Championships, Beach Bolivarian Championships.

Furthermore, in the table we can see that these are the countries that have received the most support from their governments, with the exception of Mexico and Brazil, which have appealed to the talent of their athletes and the skills of their leaders to achieve good results.

Now, it is curious how Brazil, with nine million surfers, of which 10% are competitors, 1% are high-level competitors, has not received any money and only this year received 400.000 dollars, an amount that is clearly not enough to achieve massification and have its high-performance teams at the best level. Despite this, Brazil continues to produce important results. And on the Mexican side, they have the current ISA world champion.

Argentina is another country that has achieved good results with ISA world champions in open and junior competitions and good results as a team in all the competitions in which it has participated in the past three years, the result of comprehensive work by the federation.

Chile is another country that is emerging with great strength and its results are obvious, something that I already expanded on in my previous article, “Chile, has the monster awakened?".

Just for qualifying for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, a nation receives 2 million dollars from FIFA and 6.5 million more if it reaches the Round of 8, but in addition to this, have you ever wondered how much did the Latin American Football Federations receive and what results did they achieve? Just as an example, in 2016 the coach of the Peruvian national team, for example, received 860 thousand dollars, more than the entire Peruvian football federation in total for the year.

In contrast, surfing in Peru has historically given that nation the largest number of world, Pan American, Latin, South American and professional titles than any other sport thanks to good use of resources and organization.

Costa Rica is a constant of good results and has demonstrated good management by always being in the first places. With a population of almost 5 million, it is the Uruguayan football equivalent of surfing in terms of a quarry of good athletes, the product of good organizational work.

But there are emerging nations like Panama that are developing and having good organization and good new talents, we will see how they do in these World Cups.

In the case of Colombia, it was born just this year and has had a good use of its networks to inform about its wide range of activities and has given people something to talk about with its star athlete Freddy. In Iquique for the Bolivarian Beach Games they obtained their first Olympic medal in rowing.

Perhaps one of the individual exceptions has been Venezuela, which in 2016 had a 4th and 11th place in the open world championship in Costa Rica and that same year at the Bolivarian Beach Games in Iquique with support and administration of resources by the government took second place in the medal table in surfing with three gold medals, three silver and three bronze. In 2017 at the Pan American Games with totally private support from a person from the media, it managed to place seventh in the general classification.

Puerto Rico also, despite not receiving a dollar last year, finished eighth in the Pan American Games, obtaining a silver medal, placing 5th in the medal table.

The third country with the least support is Uruguay, however, some very good athletes have come from there, in fact, they won a bronze medal last year at the Pan American Games in the longboard category; therefore, if the population were compared to the results, it could be said that if they had more support they could very soon be a power.

El Salvador, for example, has not participated in the last two World Championships, nor in the Pan American Championship last year, but it had a gold, a silver and a bronze medal in the 2016 Bolivarian Beach Games in Iquique, occupying fourth place in the surfing medal table out of seven countries that won medals and a total of 11 participating nations. It is known that they have had internal problems in the federation that have affected participation, a situation that I believe is already being resolved slowly.

Of the countries for which we have data, the Dominican Republic has had a constant participation in events but its performance has been low and there is much to be said because there have been political, natural and even criminal factors that have affected surfing and therefore its results. It should also be noted that what they receive is not even enough to pay for the offices and some other procedures.

I think we have a lot to analyze from this table and compare ourselves to see. My analysis has been a low-level overview of the situation in each country, but it is the opening for future and very interesting analyses.

What is certain is that we still need more support and, above all, we lack the necessary formality to attend and make ourselves felt in the Olympic world. There are protocols to be followed and planned work and optimal management of resources that will allow us to achieve better results.

*Antonio Sotillo is an authoritative voice on Latin American surfing. He was a driving force behind its growth as a founding member of the Latin American Association of Professional Surfers (ALAS) and president of the Pan-American Surfing Association (APAS) from 2004 to 2006. He was also president of the Venezuelan surfing federation for several periods, including the golden years of surfing in that country.