Olympic status gives surfing a boost in Cuba

GBNews24 Desk//

When they were children, Cuba’s surfers used to transform their school desks into boards to ride the waves.

They now have real equipment. And since surfing became an Olympic sport, it is gaining acceptance amongst authorities on the Communist-ruled nation where its practitioners have often faced police harassment.

In the fishing community of Santa Fe to the west of Havana, Ayax Borrero, 34, carries his surfboard under one arm as he and two friends meander through the streets that separate his home from the sea, AFP reports.

It’s a cloudy day and the waves are crashing against the shore.

“Over all, we depend on weather conditions like cold fronts, hurricanes — which are what create the waves here — so that’s why the season begins in winter” from November to April, said Borrero, an architect.

Their playground is the ruins of an old rock pool allegedly once belonging to a bourgeois called Antolin before the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power.

The area now serves as a promontory from where surfers can launch themselves into the water.

Surfing reminds Borrero of his youth, although back then boards were almost impossible to find.

“I started young, around seven or eight, with wooden school desks. That’s what we used back then.

“They were really heavy!” he added, laughing.

He recognizes that it was a good starting point as “afterwards, when my dad bought me my first board at 11 years old, I was able to stand up straight away.”