Singapore’s first Asian Games surfer is chasing more than history. She wants a medal.
At 21, Camille Spaccarotella is about to step into uncharted waters for her country when surfing makes its Asian Games debut in Tahara, Japan, on Sep 25. She will carry the Singapore flag into a line-up dominated by regional heavyweights like Japan and Indonesia – and she is not 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 bold. The stage is new. The intent is clear.
From Bali holiday to Games debut
Her story does not begin with a national programme or a high-performance pathway. It starts with a family beach holiday in Bali about a decade ago, when a teenager fell in love with the rush of standing on a board and racing down a wall of water.
What began as a holiday thrill hardened into a habit, then a craft. The ocean became classroom and obsession.
The first test of that obsession, though, was brutal.
“I did my first ever competition in 2020, I believe, but obviously it was not a very serious one,” Spaccarotella recalled. “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.”
No waves. No score. Just nerves and doubt.
She walked away from the idea of competing, at least for a while. But the sport never let her go.
A couple of years later, back in Bali and back in a contest jersey, she tried again at a local event. This time she finished third. One result, but a completely different feeling. The door to competitive surfing, once slammed shut in her mind, creaked open again.
Chasing waves abroad
Singapore’s coastline offers many things. Consistent, surfable waves are not among them.
With almost no natural surf spots to train on at home, Spaccarotella built her career offshore. Bali became her base, her proving ground, her second home. She spends up to four months a year there, stacking hours in the water, working on timing, positioning, and the small technical details that separate good surfers from dangerous ones.
Her breakthrough on the regional stage arrived in June 2023 at the Asian Surfing Championships in the Maldives. Wearing Singapore colours, she came agonisingly close to a podium finish. No medal, but a message: she belonged in that company.
The calendar grew busier. Events in India, South Korea and the Philippines pulled her into unfamiliar line-ups and against surfers who had been doing this for years.
“It not only changed the way I surfed and how I approached surfing, but it also allowed me to discover more parts of the world and connect with different people in the surf community as well,” she said.
On those trips she found something just as valuable as competition experience: mentors. “They have been competing for years, and they've gained so much experience and knowledge in this domain that they were very willing to share what they had learned.”
The learning curve steepened. So did the ambition.
A first for Singapore – and a platform
In 2024, Spaccarotella crossed a line no Singapore surfer had ever reached. She became the country’s first qualifier for the Asian Games.
The surfing event in Tahara will feature some of the best in Asia, with Japan and Indonesia expected to set the standard. She knows the scale of the challenge, but she is not shrinking from it.
“I do want to have a podium finish,” she repeated. “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 duality is striking: medal intent and genuine appreciation for the moment. She wants to win, but she also understands what simply being there represents – for herself and for a country with no real waves.
Building a surf culture without an ocean
Spaccarotella’s ambitions stretch beyond her own heat scores.
She wants her run at the Games to ripple back home, to spark curiosity, to push young Singaporeans toward a sport that still feels distant and exotic.
The biggest barrier is not interest. It is infrastructure.
With no consistent, ocean-like conditions in Singapore, surfers struggle to find meaningful water time. That is why she keeps flying out to Bali. It is also why she believes Singapore needs a purpose-built wave pool if it is serious about developing the sport.
“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.
She points to South Korea, where artificial waves have helped nurture a scene in a country not blessed with abundant natural surf. The model is there. The technology exists. The question is whether Singapore wants to catch that wave.
“It could be a huge game changer … and more people would be willing to try the sport.”
For now, she will keep chasing swells abroad, carrying a flag from a nation of flat seas into a Games lineup of seasoned coastal powers. One surfer, one board, and a chance to rewrite what is possible for a country that has to manufacture its waves.
