He is 74 years old and the king of waves: the incredible life of Daniel Gil, the pioneer of Argentine surf who lives on the beach

With the health of a 89 year old man, Winston Churchill he announced his retirement from politics. At Casa Rosada, José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz He was sworn in as Minister of the President's Economy José María Guido. And at the customs of Ezeiza, football players Antonio Rattín and Silvio Marzolini They brought the first surfboards to Argentina.

In 1963 Daniel Gil He traveled with the Boca Juniors team to Peru. His father, Antonio Gil, was a vice-president of the club and a wealthy businessman, owner of more than fifteen companies. "If you want to surf, come to Buenos Aires and I will send you to Peru with the team.I just learned that he has been surfing this country for a thousand years," writes Antonio to his son in a telegram. Daniel, 17, was in Brazil. I had traveled with one goal: to find a surfboard to buy and surf. For two years, he had been looking for her on this scale of Miami that would mark his life.

Now at age 74, Daniel, who surfs whenever he wants, talks with Infobae at his home in Mar del Plata where he teaches all those who learn, no matter how old they are. To receive a scholarship from your school, all you have to do is complete one condition: have a ballot of more than 7 points. His house, which is on the beach where he surfs since the age of 18, has no numbering, he has a name: Kikiwai. He does not live in front of the beach, he lives on the beach. Built by him, made of stone and wooden openings, he has only 30 steps between the dry feet of the bridge where he drinks coffee and foam between his fingers, on the shore. It's in a corner, between the harbor and Punta Mogotes. Far from the crowd of Playa Grande, the only vestige of this is that Mar del Plata is also a gray asphalt with tar joints resembling crushed boas, so characteristic of the inner streets of the city.

"When I was 15, I went to Europe with my dad.It was a work trip for his companies and for Boca.When we returned, we did it for New York. After a stopover in Miami, Dad suggested I stay a few days. Miami was being born, it was a swamp full of crocodiles at that time. He went to take a bath and I went out for a walk. I walked a block away and it was there, "he says.

-A surfer, the picture of a guy standing on a longboard that a wave of 5 meters of this color came down (it is indicated a pendant that it takes, turquoise). My legs are loose. You could brake standing up! Steal a board ?! My heart started beating very hard, my legs relaxed. I sat on the sidewalk cord across the street. I did not even encourage myself to come closer. I looked from there. It took a while before I got up and headed for the window. I went in and saw the tables. I touched them.

– All stops. Many I did not know what to ask the seller. The counter was wooden with glbad and there were things posted below. The guy took the glbad, took things out and gave them. I saw a Maltese cross with a turquoise stone in the middle. He appeared to ask me questions about the cross; My mother was very Catholic, she always drew saints and crosses. He lifted the glbad, took out the cross, I looked at it, a beauty. Before returning it, I do not know why, I returned it. I said in return "I am a surfer" (I'm a surfer) Oh, my heart broke!

Back to the hotel Daniel asked his father to buy a surfboard in Mar del Plata, where they went every summer. Antonio refused; They already wore trunks with gifts, as well as a Bolex camera and three barrels of Patero wine made by the Galician family. Customs would be a test, it was not to add a table of two meters. He promised to buy it in Buenos Aires.

Already in Argentina, he discovered that the tables did not exist yet. Neither in Chile nor in Uruguay. In Brazil yes: there was one. At one end of Ipanema, there was a man with a board. Daniel wanted to buy it, but it was for sale.

-Yes, but I had to wait 25 days for it to be ready for 10 minutes. I had a line, a waiting list.

– They borrowed it?
Yes In a black rubber notebook, like that of the grocers, he wrote the names. During the twenty-five days, I sat on a rock to watch how they surfed.

It is in Brazil that Daniel received the telegram from his father. Antonio told him that there were tables in Peru, that he would return to Buenos Aires and travel with Boca.So it could be made of this tomcat two meters long and half a meter long that turns it on.

– How was the customs?

-They did not let me go. "What is it?" They asked. I said: "surfboards". "Tables of what?" He had wrapped them in corrugated paper; They looked like three submarines. When they asked me to unpack them, Marzolini, Rattin, Angelito Rojas and Antonio Roma They told the customs not to break, a thousand hours had been traveled. The discussion continued until they said they were new devices to train. I went with my three longboard and I came to Mar del Plata.

When he came to this very place where he is now, but 56 years ago, the wave is perfect entry, like a fan. He left the car, lowered the board and dived.

– Did you know how to keep yourself?

-Yes, because beyond the test in Brazil, he had repeated the jump for two years. In my room, in the living room, no matter where (laughs). As an only child, I got used to doing what I wanted because they gave me the cake formula.

– Cake?
-You see that no one receives the cake because nobody has the post of the recipe of the grandmother. I have the recipe of the grandmother.

-Jesus Christ and love, nothing more. You change that and that's all. When dad died, I went from millionaire to villero. Sick father, they brought him a pile of papers to sign. Between all the papers, they put him the badignment of shares. When he wanted to accept, he had nothing. In order to kill no one, I left Buenos Aires. I had to do everything to forget and get rid, forgive. In the end, I ended up thinking that my uncles, instead of being sons of whores, were two angels who put me in the air so that I could change of life without having to tell the story of family, money and factories. Surf and I become a happy guy.

– If I had continued with this life …

– I would have died at age 50 as my old man.

– Are you convinced of that?

– Totally. I would not be here. It would be a tuxedo, patent leather shoes, New York with Trump and Macri. I'll do the trick. Teaching surfing is the best thing that can happen to a person. I see it, I raise people: they come shit, green, ruined, sick.

– Yes, they come to heal. People can not anymore.

Long before his seven marriages, nine children and 12 grandchildren, Daniel opened his doors in the 60s, in Buenos Aires, in the five corners, Libertad and Juncal. But the first salary was won by bathing the hand of his first stepfather. "He was an architect, he built the first glbad buildings in Buenos Aires, the ones you drove to your apartment, I drew the bathrooms, with stone arches, mirrors and plants. I have earned $ 2,000 per bathroom. I drew all day, "he recalls.

A car salesman at the dealership of Boca president Alberto J. Armando, he had a commercial photography studio and he set up a factory in Mar del Plata. sweaters which alternated with oil painting: exposed and sold in Buenos Aires. With the sale of the factory, he bought a fishing boat. He was barbaric until the gearbox broke and he was forced to sell it. Then he invented one of the first radio-taxi companies on the coast. For the same time, a new facet has entered his life. "I met people who prayed and I loved the way they prayed. I became involved and became a leader and servant of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal here in Mar del Plata. I spent 18 years with them coordinating prayer groups, "he says.

When Bosque Peralta Ramos was, according to Daniel, a no man's land, he organized a security company. Orvecong baptized: district organization of control and guard. He himself patrolled. The television producer came later, he called Daniel Gil Productions. This no longer existed when he founded the surfing subcommittee within the club Atlético Huracán de Mar del Plata. "There I put my Argentinian surf academy that was guacha of the institution," reckons.

While he shows her how to pbad paraffin on her board to a twenty-something girl at home, that is to say on the beach, Daniel remembers that surfing was in his life well before the moment he saw a painting: "I've been an inveterate drill all my life since I was 7 years old."

– But if there was no table, what did you pierce?

– With the chest (laughs). Chest and hand. When I was little boy, I was bored until the spit. My hobby was maderitas bobble. The owner of my house in Mar del Plata was a carpenter. I saw all day long and all day, pieces of wood fell. Then, the lady who took care of me, Ophelia, gathered all the little maderitas and put them in a bag in which the onions come and gave them to me. When mom went to the center, which still did not exist the pedestrian San Martin, I left in the popular, next to the fishermen's wharf. Then I went to the end of the pier and threw a small piece of wood. When the wave arrived, the little maderita came out, pa, pa, pa and I continued to walk along the breakwater. Up to the shore, looking at it. If he could save her, he did it. Otherwise, he threw another.

56 years ago, he came to Mar del Plata to surf, but he lived there for 24 years and he sold the car 18 years ago: "Not to move, you have to come, you have to take, you have to take, you have to bring ', & # 39; I do not have any cars anymore. Enough: I'm not going. I arrived at the place where I always wanted to be"

The calculation does not stop being precise: one of his 8 dogs threw the ball of the house to the sea hundred times a day for ten years. The result was the injury to the shoulder, the rotator cuff. Also, 10 years playing with a dog, on the beach, all year.

Maria, his wife for over twenty years, comes and offers coffee. And he says, "With Maria, we have never promised anything. If today we are barbarians, if today we have a spectacular day tomorrow, it will be brutal. And if tomorrow is brutal, the past will be extraordinary. "

The girl who has plucked her plank some time ago comes back soaked and panting. Daniel asks him how he was doing. Under the rubber suit, your belly inflates and deflates quickly. She is drowned but manages to say: "spectacular". They both smile. There is water that they are the only ones to know.

– What are you talking about when you are in the water, waiting for a wave?

-Do not talk about anything! He speaks outside the water. In the water, no.

-What do you have to say in the water ?! Once we are inside, that you do not listen to anyone, do we come to talk to you? No, take it. This is not talked about.

-Because you are at peace. You appreciate that. This is part of the story.

– There is a kind of generous act that is to leave the wave to another. It's like that?

– of course. But it depends: if it's a shit waving the waves to everyone, I do not leave it, I pbad.

-What's a wave of shit?

– The guy who goes in red, when you come in green, green, green and you cross. There are waves breaking. If I hold the wave there (points to the tip of the breakwater), I am the owner of the wave. You can not put anyone before I finish it. If you cross or come paddling and surf, you interrupt me.

-The first time, "you messed up the wave". The second, something stronger. The third can come a slap. If you are not a beginner, of course. The owner of this wave is the one who starts first, the one who is at the top of the stone swore that he was going down.

To his youngest son, Surfiel ("It means" the wave of God. "Surf is a wave and" he "is" of God ""). Daniel built a little house over his own. In white stone, it has only a kitchen, a bathroom and a mezzanine with a mattress of a square and a window: "I calculated it so that it only had to raise his head at 5 in the morning: from there he can see if there are any waves to grasp. "

All of Daniel's children are surfing. They are champions, they are medalists. For example, Surfiel will be competing in longboard in Pan-American surfing to be held in Lima. In the previous edition, he had won the silver medal. His brother, Daniel Gil Junior, has been eight times champion of Argentina.

-I do not expect anything, I let him come. I like the surprise. I continue with my recipe and the cake becomes barbaric.