Singapore’s First Asian Games Surfer Aims for Podium in Japan

The waves that will define Camille Spaccarotella’s career won’t be anywhere near home.

When surfing makes its Asian Games debut in Tahara, Japan, the 21-year-old will paddle out not just as a medal hopeful, but as Singapore’s first-ever representative in the sport at the continental showpiece. A single heat, a single set, could mark the moment a non-traditional surfing nation plants its flag on a new frontier.

It all started far more casually. A family beach holiday in Bali, a borrowed board, a teenager drawn to the rush of standing up on a moving wall of water. What began as a holiday distraction hardened, slowly, into an obsession – and then a profession.

The first time she tried to test that passion in a competitive arena, though, it fell apart.

“I did my first ever competition in 2020, I believe, but obviously it was not a very serious one,” Spaccarotella recalled. The nerves crushed her. “I was so stressed during that competition, I didn't catch a single wave in my heat. So I decided maybe this is not for me.”

Most careers end right there, in silence. Hers didn’t.

A couple of years later, she went back to Bali, entered a local event and this time climbed onto the podium, finishing third. The result didn’t just restore confidence; it reset her ambitions. Surfing stopped being something she was trying out. It became something she was chasing.

Finding waves far from home

From that point, the milestones came quickly.

In June 2023, Spaccarotella pulled on Singapore colours at the Asian Surfing Championships in the Maldives and came agonisingly close to a medal. No hardware, but a clear signal she belonged in the regional conversation.

To get there, she had to build a career around a geographical problem. Singapore has coastline, but not the kind of consistent, powerful swell that forges elite surfers. There are no famous reef breaks here, no long point breaks to grow up on. So she goes to where the waves are.

Bali has become her second home and primary training base. Up to four months a year, she lives by the ocean, logging hour after hour in the water, sharpening timing, reading changing conditions, pushing herself into heavier sections. That commitment has already taken her well beyond familiar waters, into competitions in India, South Korea and the Philippines.

Those trips have done more than toughen her up. They’ve plugged her into a circuit of seasoned Asian surfers who have been competing for years and are willing to share what they’ve learned. The conversations in car parks and on boat rides out to the break have changed the way she surfs and the way she thinks about surfing – as a craft, a career, a community.

Asian Games debut, podium ambition

Now comes the biggest stage yet.

In 2024, Spaccarotella became the first Singaporean surfer to qualify for the Asian Games. When the surfing competition begins on Sep 25 in Tahara, she will line up against regional heavyweights from Japan and Indonesia, nations with deep surfing cultures and deep talent pools.

She isn’t going just to make up the numbers.

“I do want to have a podium finish. That is my aim for this,” she said. The target is clear. So is the perspective. “But at the same time, I need to also recognise that this is a huge step in my athletic career as well, and I'm just really grateful for that.”

The field will be stacked. Japan’s surfers know these waters; Indonesia’s know how to squeeze every ounce out of a wave. Yet Spaccarotella arrives with something else – the sense that every heat is a piece of history, every result a reference point for whoever comes next from Singapore.

Building a surf culture from scratch

Her ambitions stretch beyond medals.

She knows that whatever she does in Japan will echo back home, where surfing is still a niche pursuit and access to proper conditions is the sport’s biggest obstacle. Without consistent, ocean-like waves, young surfers in Singapore have to leave the country just to get the repetitions required to improve.

Spaccarotella believes that can change. Not by waiting for the ocean to cooperate, but by building the right infrastructure.

She points to South Korea, where a purpose-built wave pool has helped grow a scene in a country not blessed with abundant natural surf. A similar facility in Singapore, she argues, could transform the sport’s trajectory almost overnight.

“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. “It could be a huge game changer … and more people would be willing to try the sport.”

For now, the focus is on Tahara and the sets that will roll in off the Pacific later this month. One surfer, one board, one nation new to this stage. If she finds the right waves at the right time, Singapore’s surfing story won’t just have a pioneer.

It might start with a medal.