Camille Spaccarotella: Singapore's First Surfing Representative at Asian Games

In a country better known for glassy reservoirs than crashing surf, Camille Spaccarotella is chasing something that barely exists at home – and trying to put it on a podium.

Next week in Tahara, Japan, the 21-year-old will stand on the sand as Singapore’s first-ever surfing representative at the Asian Games, a milestone for both athlete and nation as the sport makes its debut at the continental showpiece. She is not going just to make up the numbers.

Her target is blunt: a medal.

From Bali holiday to Asian Games

The story began far from any notion of elite sport. A decade ago, on a family holiday in Bali, Spaccarotella picked up a board for fun. The rush of standing up on a wave – that fleeting, weightless moment – hooked her.

What started as a beach pastime hardened into obsession, then into a career.

The path, though, was anything but smooth. Her first competition, in 2020, was a small event and, by her own admission, a disaster. Overwhelmed by nerves, she did not catch a single wave in her heat. Not one.

The experience rattled her so badly she wondered if competitive surfing was even for her.

Time and distance helped. A couple of years later, she tried again at a local event back in Bali. This time she made the final and finished third. The result did more than add a line to her résumé; it rewired her belief that she could belong in a contest jersey.

Chasing waves abroad

The breakthrough soon followed. In June 2023, Spaccarotella pulled on Singapore colours at the Asian Surfing Championships in the Maldives and came agonisingly close to a podium finish. It was a clear signal she could hang with the region’s emerging talent.

To do that, she has had to live a very different life from most Singaporean athletes. Her country simply does not have the raw material her sport demands. Natural surf is almost non-existent.

So her training base is not East Coast Park or Sentosa, but Bali.

She spends up to four months a year there, logging hour after hour in the water, reading swells, refining technique, and learning to adapt to different breaks. The island has become both her playground and her laboratory.

Competition has taken her further afield – to India, South Korea and the Philippines – where she has tested herself against more seasoned surfers from across Asia. Each trip has added something: sharper tactics, a better sense of heat management, and a closer look at how veterans handle pressure.

Those opponents, she says, have not just pushed her; they have educated her. Many have been competing for years and were willing to share the knowledge they had built up in a sport still finding its structure in much of the region.

A historic start – and a bold target

In 2024, the steady climb paid off. Spaccarotella became the first Singaporean surfer to qualify for the Asian Games, securing her place in a field that will feature regional heavyweights such as Japan and Indonesia when competition starts on Sep 25 in Tahara.

She knows the scale of the challenge. Japan and Indonesia boast deep surfing cultures, established coaching networks and, crucially, world-class waves.

Still, she has set her sights high.

“I do want to have a podium finish. That is my aim for this,” she said, while acknowledging the moment itself represents a major step in her athletic career and something she is determined to savour.

The ambition is clear. So is the gratitude. For an athlete from a country without surf, simply standing in that draw is a statement.

Building a surf culture at home

Spaccarotella’s vision stretches beyond her own results. She wants her journey to jolt Singapore’s sporting imagination, to show that surfing is not just something you try on holiday but a discipline that can be pursued seriously, even from a small, urban island.

Right now, the biggest barrier is obvious: waves.

Singapore’s coastline does not offer the consistent, ocean-like conditions needed to develop surfers from beginner to elite. Without that, aspiring riders must travel, often at significant cost, just to get the basic hours on a board.

She believes the solution lies in infrastructure, not geography. A purpose-built wave pool, she argues, could transform the landscape, providing reliable, surfable waves and a controlled environment for progression – much like what South Korea has done to grow its own scene despite lacking abundant natural surf.

“What the next step could be is really to bring in a proper wave pool that generates ocean-like waves, and that's what will bring in, I think, a new generation of surfers here,” she said. In her view, such a facility would be “a huge game changer” and lower the barrier for newcomers to try the sport.

For now, the ocean she needs is still a flight away. The board bags will keep rolling through airports; the training blocks in Bali will remain the backbone of her preparation.

But if Spaccarotella can turn that distant grind into a medal in Japan, the question for Singapore will no longer be whether surfing belongs in its sporting future – only how fast it can catch the wave she is trying to start.