It's the most wave-rich nation on Earth, yet Indonesia has yet to field a single surfer on the Championship Tour. Historically, Ketut Menda is Indonesia's highest ranked surfer finishing 52nd in the world, however that was in 1981 and the result came on the back of just two contests.

The surfing world has changed a lot in the forty years since, many more Indonesian kids surf, yet none have broken into the top 100 like Menda did. A combination of social, economic, and even climatic factors have been used to explain the lack of success to date.

However, last week the WSL changed its tour structure, effectively dismantling the global Qualifying Series and splitting it up into Regional Qualifying Series with a quota of surfers from each region progressing into the newly-created Challenger Series. At a stroke of a pen that put three surfers, Rio Waida and Oney Anwar for the men, plus Kailani Johnson for the women, into the world top 100.

Following the changes, Swellnet reached out to Tim Hain from the Asian Surfing Cooperative to get his assesment on the future of competitive surfing in Indonesia.

Despite an otherwise gloomy year for us here in Indonesia, a couple of rays of light have shone through.

The first was Rio Waida competing in the inaugural Olympics surfing event - plus I got a call last week saying Rio was invited to the Corona Open in Mexico so we'll also see him there.

The second bright spot was Rio, Oney Anwar, and Kailani Johnson being invited to join this year's Challenger Series.

The last ray of hope was the news from the World Surf League about the new tour structure.

Of course, the current problem is the COVID situation. Travelling and holding events isn't even possible here yet and it's already August, and the fact that the 2022 QS season starts in August of this year and ends in April of next, which is outside of Indonesia's best swell period. Yet hopefully we can do at least two or three QS events in Indonesia, and Japan can also produce two or three events, then our top guys and girls will have a shot at making the cut for the 2023 Challenger Series.

Rio Waida

The new rules state that five surfers from Asia join the Challenger Series. I'd say it's a low possibility for surfers in the Philippines, Taiwan, China, or other Asian nations to make it, for lack of support if not talent, unfortunately.

So it may take a bit of time, but the pathway is there and I have no doubt that over the next few years you'll see more and more Indonesian surfers climbing up the ladder from boardriders to the QS, to the CS, and onto the CT. We're betting on Rio to be the first Indonesian on the CT, and that will definitely encourage others to follow his lead. 

He'll already be the first Indonesian on the Challenger Series, has already competed in a CT (The Corona Bali at Keramas in 2019), plus the first Indonenesian in the first surfing Olympics. He's setting the example for the other guys and girls here in Indonesia. 

That said, there are still problems to overcome.

With Rio getting into the Olympics and being a flag bearer for Indonesia, the government has seen that surfing is a legitimate sport, however they need to be convinced that the WSL tours are equally as important to be involved in, as the surfers that won Olympic medals all are products of the WSL system.

The Indonesian government seems to think that only events where the the OCA (Olympic Council of Asia) is involved should receive money to support the athletes. This limits support and funding to primarily ISA events as a path to the Olympics, along with other multi-sport events such as the South East Asian Games, and Asian Beach Games. Limited funding is available for surfers to do WSL events.

So the recent news from the WSL gave us another ray of hope. It gives us an even more compelling story to present to both government and private enterprise as we make the case for financial and other means of support for hosting QS events here in Indonesia.

It's not clear if or how the central government will support international and national surfing events. Mostly it's either the families and/or their sponsor  - if they are lucky enough to still have one - that fund their WSL campaigns currently. 

This is the best shot we have of striking while the iron is hot.

We need to be successful in presenting to the government how a surfer becomes a professional athlete: From the grom level up to the CT and Olympic level. That it starts at a local beach with a boardriders club, then steps up to bigger local and national events, leading to WQS, CS, and CT. Not only do the surfers need support, but organisations need funds to produce the events that allow the surfers to get rankings and rise to success.

If we're succesful, then we'll see sustainable growth and more and more Indonesian surfers filling the top professional ranks.

There's no shortage of talent and ability. They have the proper surfboards, they surf everyday, and they have the senior surfers that came up through ISC/ASC/WQS events as their coaches, mentors, and judges at local comps to look to for guidance and knowledge. Ten-year old kids were out charging Padang Padang on this last swell!

// TIM HAIN

Some background on the Asian Surfing Co-operative:

In 2004, Tipi Jabrik started the ISC (Indonesian Surfing Championships) as a national tour for Indonesian surfers. In 2011, the idea came to expand and create the Asian Surfing Championship tour, which launched in 2012 and ran until 2017.  The ASC held contests in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Maldives, India, Philippines, and Taiwan.

Along the way, the ASC started co-sanctioning some of events with the WSL, such as Taiwan Open of Surfing, Siargao Cup at Cloud 9, and the Mentawai Pro, which proved to draw a bigger field to the events which made the event sponsors happy. Thus in late 2016, the ASC in collaboration with WSL Australia agreed that moving forward we would run all of our international events as WSL QS events, provided the event budgets were big enough to pay the tab. Locations such as Krui, Nias, Pacitan, Keramas, West Sumbawa, Simuelue came on board. Existing co-sanctioned events continued, and the WSL also ensured that the ASC was involved in all QS events happening in the Asian region (with the exception of Japan, who had their own team).

With this change it was decided that the ASC should change their name to Asian Surf Cooperative, as we were no longer running a contest series that crowned Asian champions at the end of the season. The name is meant to relay to our audience that we provide surfing related services to everyone, we cooperate with everyone, to advance the sport of surfing here in the Asian region.