Global Courant
Rio Waida may be one of the best surfers on the planet, but he still remembers the days when, paralyzed by fear, he was dragged on a board by his parents in the middle of the ocean.
Born into a family of surfers on the Indonesian island of Bali, it was probably only a matter of time before Waida overcame his fears.
“Somehow I started to love surfing – I don’t know why,” he tells CNN Sport.
It could have been, Waida says, when he grew up and started surfing with his friends, or when he first won a contest and suddenly felt a desire to improve his craft in search of further victories.
That competitive fire has been constant throughout his surfing career and burns as bright as ever after Waida qualified for this year’s Championship Tour, surfing’s premier competition, and survived the mid-season hiatus in April.
“I want to be world champion”, says Waida. “I want to be like Kelly Slater, Mick Fanning – they will always be my heroes and I want to be like them. I also want to bring a gold medal from the Olympics to Indonesia. That would be huge.”
Despite Indonesia’s reputation as an iconic surfing destination, Waida is the first person from the Southeast Asian country to compete in the championship tournament.
He cites a number of reasons for Indonesia’s underrepresentation at the top of the sport, including the high cost of travel to tournaments and a reluctance by locals to leave the best surfing conditions in the world.
“Whenever we see a bad wave, we don’t get excited to surf… But if we want to win, we have to ride it and then do our best in any condition. So this is what I did and it is working. It was definitely difficult, but I tried to learn and accept it. I lost a lot before I qualified (for the championship tournament). And then I take all those losses and try to get better every day.”
His father, a construction worker, has been based in Japan since 2008 to support the family and Waida’s travels around the world. His mother, meanwhile, has invested time and energy in his surfing, filming his waves from shore so he can fine-tune his technique.
Global Courantl
