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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Windsurfer finds new water sports calling

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Arlie Juarez, a former national windsurfer in the 1990s, participated in three Southeast Asian Games in 1995, 1997 and 2001, bagging bronze medals in the 1995 and 1997 editions. He was also a gold-medal winner in the Presidents’ Cup Windsurfing International Championships in 1997.

When he returned to competition in 2015 for the RS 1 World Windsurfing Championship held at the Taal lake, he found out he still had it as he settled for second in the Masters’ Class.

Arlie Juarez, a windsurfing star for the Philippine team during the 1990s.

“I should have won the gold because the winner was eventually disqualified, but the organizers never got to change the standings. But it’s not a problem with me,” said Juarez, who is now based in Anilao in Mabini, Batangas, where the present national windsurfing team members are based.

From time to time, he meets with these up-and-coming windsurfers.

“My dream is to become a coach. I want to share all the things I have learned in windsurfing to those young athletes, but the problem is it will be difficult to live on the salary of a national coach if I make it a full-time job, so I just help  them from time to time. What I take pride in is the fact that a lot of my former windsurfing teammates have also become certified divers and instructors and I was the one who helped them get their certifications,” said Juarez.

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A diving course will cost a diver over half a million pesos to take and complete,  but with his courses sponsored by the Ayala family, Juarez charges only P27,000  for a three-day open water course, P18,000 for a two-day advanced rescue diving course and P85,000 for a monthlong dive master course.

Arlie Juarez is now a certified diving instructor.

With this, he has a good reason to maintain his present job that has brought him to some of the the best diving sites in the Philippines in the company of personalities and celebrities, including Prince Albert of Monaco and Prince Andrew of England, Manny Pacquiao, Luis Manzano, the Sorianos and the Ayalas, among others.

“During our  time in the 1990s, it was very difficult to become  a national team member, you need to beat the top ones like Richard Paz, whom I also helped to become a certified diver. I peaked in the mid 1990s and as a heavyweight in windsurfing, I was on top of my class. But I could not afford to stop my work because I was still sending my two daughters to college in New York,” added Juarez.

As a dive master, he rates his home waters in Anilao as the best diving spot because of the wide variety of marine life there, plus the fact that it is near Manila. He also included as among the best diving sites the Tubbataha Reef, which is already a heritage site; the Apo Reef which  has the the second largest coral reef in the world; and the Verde Island Passage, described as the center  of the center of marine biodiversity with more than 2,000 species.

Eventually, Juarez would like to settle down with his daughters in the United States, but before that, he intends to enjoy the waters here as long as he can, teaching and guiding others in the sport.

 

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