The first adapted surf school in Argentina, Mardelsurf, celebrated this Sunday 18 years since its creation in Mar del Plata, with a show on the beach that combined activities for World Down Syndrome Day and an aquatic costume festival to say goodbye summer.
Starting in the morning, dozens of students, teachers and volunteers from the school came to the headquarters in Playa Cardiel, in the La Perla norte area of Mar del Plata, to participate in the “Mardelsurf Festival 2022”.
The school emerged in 2004 at the initiative of former Argentine surf champion Lucas Rubiño (40), and became a reference in adapted sports at a local and national level, through which 800 students pass each year.
“People with Down syndrome come here to the blind, from girls and boys from 18 months to older ones, like a 95-year-old woman who brought her grandchildren the other day and the next day she dared to get involved with the table” , Rubiño told in dialogue with Télam.
With almost two decades of experience, the head of this NGO recalled how it all began 18 years ago: “I surfed all day, I had very long hair, and a woman approached to ask if her son with autism could try. I told him that yes, and I went into the water with him. As soon as we touched the sea, he got excited and pulled my hair very hard and I didn’t know what to do. I got really sick and realized that I lacked tools, and I decided to train”.
Rubiño said that he then decided to study as a teacher in special education and trained as a surf instructor, and summer after summer he added collaborators and specially adapted boards, until the school was consolidated.
“The fact that we are turning 18 seems incredible, and we decided to put together a festival that would combine several things. On the one hand, it is the farewell to summer, but also March is the month of Down Syndrome, because the 21st is the world day, and they are also the carnivals. So the idea was to mix everything and do adapted surfing with costumes,” he explained.
With clown masks, superhero costumes, boards with 16 people on top at the same time and amphibious chairs for students with motor disabilities, the festival had its special surf session.
“The school -he pointed out- continues to grow, and our wish is that more and more people or families who have never thought that they or their children could get on a table are encouraged. In addition, here they really integrate because there are hundreds of students who perhaps They don’t have any disabilities, and the real goal is that no one feels different: in the sea we are all the same”.
