Fernando Aguerre and Olympic surfing

an anthropological approach

Abstract

This article focus on the figure of Fernando Aguerre, the argentine who has been president of the International Surfing Association (ISA), the highest entity of world surfing for 30 years. Precisely, I focus on the documentary, produced and distributed by the ISA, entitled The impossible wave: Fernando Aguerre's quest for Olympic surfing (2022), which in Portuguese can be translated as " A onda impossível: a busca de Fernando Aguerre pelo surfe olímpico ". The film seeks to portray excerpts from the 27-year struggle that Fernando Aguerra fought to insert surfing in the Olympic Games. This goal was achieved in 2016 on the occasion of the 129th Session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), held in Rio de Janeiro, the host for that year's edition of the Games. Surfing, baseball, karate, skateboarding and climbing were selected to debut the Tokyo 2020 Games. The analysis does not fail to take into account the relationships that Aguerre established along the way, notably with the german Thomas Bach, president of the IOC, and other agents and institutions. The hypothesis of this work is that the documentary, as well as other productions carried out around the figure of Fernando Aguerre, seeks to concentrate around him significant and widely felt achievements within the specific social field of sport surfing.

Submission: Mar 15, 2025 ⊶ Accepted: Jun 10, 2025