Hot sauce, table tennis duels, and the haka: Team traditions that help surfers ward off homesickness
Join Team Peru's card tournament, jump inside Australia's Ring of Fire, go donut shopping with Nicaragua's pastry connoisseurs, and look inside the kitchen cupboards of Team Italy. Olympics.com takes you behind the scenes of different national surfing teams and their squad traditions.
Surfing
There was an emergency on Team Mexico on the eve of the 2024 ISA World Surfing Games in Puerto Rico.
When the athletes' luggage was opened, a crucial item was discovered missing.
“We forgot to bring the hot sauce!” Shelby Detmers Cesenas recalled of how she and her teammates scrambled to fix the situation. “Some of the boys came later and we're like, ‘Bring the Cholula, bring the Tapatio!’ We need spicy. We need some spice in our life.”
Familiar food is one way to keep homesickness at bay during lengthy surf trips. So are team activities and - given how competitive the athletes who participate in them are - those have plenty of spice as well.
Card games with house chores on the line, carbonara contests, and haka rehearsals - Olympics.com went behind the scenes with surfing teams from five continents to discover how they bond and stay connected to home while on the road.
Home spice: How Team Mexico and Team Jamaica bring flavour oversees
When the hot sauce finally made its way to Arecibo, the Mexican team breathed a sigh of relief.
“We always bring hot sauce because a lot of countries don't have hot sauce, especially here in Puerto Rico. They don't like spicy food and in Mexico, we like spicy food,” Detmers Cesenas told Olympics.com. “Most countries don't do hot sauce. They'll do some type of salsa, but it's not quite the same as in Mexico.”
Jamaica’s Icah Wilmot can relate. His packing list for long surf trips includes pepper sauce, a Caribbean staple that has proven as hard to find abroad as Team Mexico's beloved condiment.
“Most places you go, the flavour of the food is so much different,” Wilmot said. “In Jamaica our famous dish is called jerk - jerk chicken, jerk pork. The sauce that they make for the jerk, to season the chicken, it's so rich in flavour and spice... Normally, if I'm going somewhere for a long time, I bring a bottle of jerk sauce and just take a spoonful and add it to something and mix it up. It makes it so much better, reminds me of home.”
For Team Mexico, a dab of hot sauce is the magical ingredient that can transform a foreign dish into something that tastes like their national cuisine.
The surfers sometimes even bring a bottle with them to restaurants they visit while abroad. However, as Detmers Cesenas admitted, that is not always practical.
A more travel-friendly solution is required, and her team may have discovered just the thing.
“Most of the time we'll be coming from surfing, going to eat, so we don't have it on us. But it would be a good idea to put a little mini bottle in someone's bag to always have it,” Detmers Cesenas said. “It could be a little Tapatio keychain.”
Jerk chicken on the road? Team Jamaica has all the ingredients.
Team Italy’s best chef and Rio Waida’s plate-cleaning duties
If there was a competition for how much local food a team brings with them on the road, the Italian surfers would probably win by a large margin.
“We have a lot of pasta, a lot of Parmigiano cheese,” Giada Legati told Olympics.com. “We even bring our own coffee (machine). We call it moka, to make our coffee from Italy. We do everything to make it feel like home here.”
With the right ingredients in place, there is only one dilemma left for the Italian surfers to solve: Who is the team’s best cook?
The rivalry is fierce, but there is a clear frontrunner.
“Matteo Calatri, for sure. Hands down, he's the best cook,” Legati said. “There's a bit of competition there for who makes the best carbonara, but everyone knows Matteo is the best one.”
It helps, no doubt, that Calatri cooks for the team almost every day while on the road.
Rio Waida, on the other hand, prefers to eat rather than busy himself at the stove of Team Indonesia’s lodgings.
“I don't cook. I don't cook at all. I only eat and clean the plates,” the Tokyo 2020 Olympian said. “Everyone's good at cooking, just not me.”
Giada Legati said Team Italy travels to surf trips with pasta, cheese and coffee: "It's an important part of our culture".
Rice and donuts
As the sole Indonesian surfer on the WSL Championship Tour, Waida usually travels alone. But, as he quickly discovered at international events and training camps, travelling with the national team has many benefits.
Teammates who pack unlimited quantities of rice in their luggage is one of them.
“Always rice. We love rice,” Waida said. “I feel like we always get homesick. We love being at home, Indonesia, Bali, so we always try to find something that works for us. It can be the spicy sauce or whatever.
“I don't bring anything. I'm kind of easy. I can eat anything. But every time I travel with the Indonesian team, they're always bringing stuff and it feels like home, so I always enjoy when I'm with them.”
For Team Nicaragua, small gestures of care between teammates don't come in the form of rice or spicy sauce, but donuts.
“Something we like to do is we'll buy each other treats sometimes,” Candelaria Resano said. “Last night, I went surfing. The boys sat home and they're tired and I bought them a box of donuts. And then somebody else comes and we'll get more pastries. We do like to buy pastries for everyone. That's a little tradition we have.
“It's not healthy, but definitely good.”
Table tennis champions and air hockey wizards: Teammates who bond through battles
Donuts are good, but don’t be fooled - things are not always so sweet between teammates.
“I actually - not gonna lie - I kicked Alan's butt doing the air hockey,” Detmers Cesenas said proudly of trumping Paris 2024-bound* surfer Alan Cleland. “I'm pretty good at air hockey, so I was pretty confident in that and I just kind of destroyed him.”
Cleland may have lost in air hockey, but there is chance for redemption in table tennis – another favourite activity of the Mexican surfers.
The blue table also does not get much rest in Team GB’s quarters where Luke Dillon currently holds champion paddler status, much to the chagrin of his teammate Arran Strong.
“I want to beat him in the water and out of the water,” Strong said. “We're pretty competitive in everything we do.”
Team Peru also has a handful of table tennis aficionados. Card games are even more popular, and here the stakes are especially high.
“Sometimes if you lose, you have to do something,” Tokyo 2020 surfer Lucca Mesinas said. “Washing dishes or cooking or funny stuff like dancing.”
*As National Olympic Committees have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games, athletes' participation at the Paris Games depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at Paris 2024.
Click here to see the official qualification system for each sport.
Friendly banter and competition is part of daily life at Team Mexico.
Cheering on teammates with chants and a haka
New Zealand surfers have a bit less time to play cards or table tennis than other teams.
When it comes to big international competitions, the Kiwis are busy rehearsing the haka, which they traditionally perform on stage during the opening ceremony.
“It's very powerful," Olympic surfer Billy Stairmand said. "It's quite spiritual and it represents New Zealand in an awesome way, and it gets us together as a team and builds that morale and energy within us. It's a way for us to start the event together and as a whole and let everyone know that we have each other's back and we're here for a reason.”
Maori surfers Elliot Paerata Reid and Kehu Butler typically lead the haka and also teach their teammates the meaning of the movements.
“They've got a pretty strong history and good background of Maori and it's cool to have them around and learn from them,” Stairmand said. “We'll have a few trainings beforehand just so we're all in sync and doing the right actions.”
While New Zealand’s Pacific neighbours Australia do not have a haka, they do have something that sounds almost as menacing – the “Ring of Fire”.
Tokyo 2020 Olympian and reigning ISA World Surfing Games champion Sally Fitzgibbons has stood inside this ring many times as her teammates chanted alongside her.
“Just to hear that, ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, come on’, everything inside of you is buzzing,” Fitzgibbons said.
Sally Fitzgibbons chants with Team Australia after winning the 2024 ISA World Surfing Games.
Team chants are a common sight at surfing competitions with each nation bringing their own character and energy into the mix.
The chants can be a series of powerful words that all team members shout simultaneously, as is the case with Australia, or a back-and-forth between the athlete who has just completed their heat and their teammates, as with Team Brazil.
In the end, however, the goal is the same – to feel as one with the athletes around you and the flag stitched on your jerseys.
“It's to bring the group together and give us energy and make sure that we're representing,” Puerto Rico’s Dwight Pastrana explained. “We are really close. It's like a family almost over here. We've probably been travelling together three, four years already doing the same thing. We all know each other pretty well. We get together pretty well, and it gives us energy and almost more power to overtake all these challenges.”