Rio Waida’s qualification for the World Tour broke a longstanding hoodoo for Indonesian surfing. Despite having arguably the best and most consistent waves in the world, the surfing Mecca had never produced a WCT surfer. We tracked down the godfather of Indonesian competitive surfing and former professional surfer, Tipi Jabrik, now president of the Asian Surf Cooperative, to understand what this means for Indonesian surfing and find out a little bit more about their new star Rio Waida. 

Tracks: What does Rio’s qualification mean for Indonesian Surfing?

Tipi: It’s monumental. We’ve been hoping to have someone on tour since the days of Made Kasim and Ketut Menda in the eighties but Indonesian surfers have only ever made it to events as a wildcard for one or two events. Having Rio there finally shows Indonesia has the talent to go with the waves. It shows in the future we can have more Rios, and open more doors. Hopefully this will create some momentum that will put Indonesian surfing on the world stage permanently.

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As President of the ASC, you must have watched Rio develop over the years. How satisfying is it to see the structure you’ve set up produce a World Tour surfer?

The ASC mission was always to put Indonesian surfers on the world map. We put on a lot of WQSs and co-ran a couple of World Tour events with the WSL in Indonesia so we at least had a wildcard on the CT level. Now with a qualified surfer on the CT, it proves what the structure we’ve set up – from grom events to our boardriders championship, and select WSL events –  works.

The tour you’ve set up is probably the best in the world for wave quality.

I used to do the WQS in the late 90s and early 2000s. I was surfing at Margaret River in 1999 and I had to surf howling onshore 12 footers. I’m like this is ridiculous! I’ve never surfed 12 foot onshore Nusa Dua! Then I went to Japan and the waves were so small. I went to California and all the locals are shredding there. We have no hope you know? We get there and only have two days before the competitions starts, one day before the competition we are hanging out in the car park and trying to get used to the waves. That’s the reason the ASC exists. We have provided great evens for surfers since 2004; events in Keramas, Ulus, Canggu, HTs, Cimaja, Yoyos, Lakey Peak, and Nias. We did a lot of good places and I think that’s what attracted the WSL also. They came to us and said hey we want to work with you guys doing WQSs. 

One of the least understood challenges that really discriminates against Indonesians in their bid to make the World Tour is the difficulty they have gaining access to the countries where events are being held. Can you explain what the situation is? 

When Indonesian surfers travel outside of Indonesia it’s so hard because they have to apply a minimum of two weeks to 30 days to enter most countries. Imagine they have an event in Japan, they apply two weeks ahead, then the next event happens in California, and they have to come home to Indonesia and apply again for the visa to America. It’s crazy. What happened with Rio, since he was in the Olympics, the government have given him some help by writing letters on his behalf to the embassy of the countries he’s had to compete in. In the past, surfing was not a big part of sports in Indonesia so the government didn’t help but since the olympics we’ve had more help. But still with the green (Indonesian) passport it’s hard to travel around the world. 

I understand the ASC in conjunction with the WSL was also able to manoeuvre around these challenges to some degree?

With all those problems, the ASC put the focus on having more events in Asia so we can qualify just having events in Asia. We try to work with Phillipines, India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, to make more events in our region so we can qualify from there and hand pick a couple of events in the future to travel to outside of Asia.

ASC is helping a lot of surfers to travel just in Asia and that shows with Rio, that’s how Rio qualified. During COVID the WSL came to us and said, Indonesian surfers cannot qualify if they don’t surf in one Asian QS. The only event was in Japan and the government wasn’t letting people in so we held a QS 1000 and Rio qualified for the Challenger Series by winning that event. No matter what happens we always try to find a way for our top surfers – like Rio and Ketut – to help them shine in the world. 

I understand you’ve played a personal role in nurturing Rio’s talent. Can you give us a bit of an insight into who he is?

I remember Rio when he was around 6 to 9 years old. He moved to Bali when he was 5. He was born in Japan and surfed a lot in Japan but the problem is they live a bit far from the coast there so they decide to move to Bali because it’s a bit challenging for them. Since they moved to Bali, they get close to the Legian crew, the Padma boys, and they surf there almost everyday. They live in Jimbaran so it takes them 15-30 minutes to get to the beach but they surf all day every day usually on the beach with the mum taking them. When Rio was 9 or 10 he got picked up by Quiksilver and that’s when I get involved more and more. I was the team manager at the time. I brought Rio to Gold Coast and I would say things to him like, ‘That’s Kelly Slater, shake his hand and tell him your name.’ I opened up a lot of ways for Rio to be confident as a kid because if you don’t have a mentor you’re going to sit on the corner and do nothing. You someone need to guide you. 

Can you give us an idea of how much work goes on behind the scenes to get an Indonesian surfer on tour?

We’re highly involved even with the personal sponsorship of athletes. The companies will ask the ASC what they should do in terms of strategies, events, and on top of that we coordinate everything in our power for the success of any athlete. To make a pathway to the world tour in a country like this involves working with a lot of people; local communities across Indonesia, the industry, the surfers, parents. Surfing is such a new thing in the eyes of mainstream Indonesia you can’t imagine how much work it is. Having Rio in the Olympics really helped as well by showing the nation and the government that surfing is a big part of sports in this country.

Now with your first surfer on the World Tour, what are the short and longterm goals for the ASC? 

We want to be consistently providing a good platform for all surfers and get them to try and follow Rio’s path. We need more surfers to join Rio. He can not be a lone wolf. He needs a couple of guys around him to travel with him. Imagine if you were a Brazilian and travelling by yourself? It’s not going to be as strong a result as you have now. The plan is to make a platform for the WSL level. We want to make sure there are more people qualifying for the Challenger Series by doing the QS 5000 in Indonesia. We already have a couple of them.

We’re also pushing a club event for boardriders. We have an Indonesian surfing league. Last week we held the final with 17 surf clubs, around 1000 members, and 215 surfers across five divisions in the final. The Indonesian surfing league is something we want to push from the under tens up. We have seen the success of Australia’s boardriders culture and Australia plays a big part in how we do our movement here.