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Team Peru Is Coming to Arcadia Lake

Something remarkable is happening at this year’s Route 66 Beach Festival. Eight athletes and their coach are flying more than 4,000 miles from Lima, Peru to race Beach Sprints on an Oklahoma lake.

Let that sink in. An international team. In Edmond. Racing a brand new Olympic sport on the sand at Arcadia Lake.

Meet Team Peru

The athletes are competing for Club de Regatas Lima, one of Peru’s most storied athletic institutions. The club was founded in 1875, which means it has been putting boats in the water since before Oklahoma was a state.

Here is who is racing and where you can catch them:

• Men’s Junior 1x — Teo Rubio and Joaquin Rosales
• Women’s Junior 1x — Natalia Monteverde and Camila Augusto
• Mixed Junior 2x — Teo Rubio with Natalia Monteverde, and Joaquin Rosales with Camila Augusto
• Men’s Open 1x — Mikel Apestegui and Ignacio Caceres
• Women’s Open 1x — Domenica Dezar, Amalia Aspillaga, Natalia Monteverde, and Camila Augusto
• Mixed Open 2x — Mikel Apestegui with Amalia Aspillaga, and Ignacio Caceres with Domenica Dezar

They are led by coach Renzo Leon.

Why Peru Knows a Thing or Two About Surf

Peru has roughly 1,500 miles of Pacific coastline, and the country takes its water seriously. The northern town of Chicama is famous among surfers for producing some of the longest ridable left-hand waves anywhere on earth. Lima’s Costa Verde has surfers in the water year-round.

Here is the part that surprises people: the water is cold. The Humboldt Current pushes frigid water up the South American coast, so even at tropical latitudes, Peruvian surfers are pulling on wetsuits. Our athletes are about to trade that for an Oklahoma lake in late August.

We think they will manage.

A 3,000-Year Head Start

If Beach Sprints feels like a new sport, somebody should tell Peru.

For thousands of years, fishermen on the northern Peruvian coast have been launching narrow reed boats called caballitos de totora straight through the surf, riding them back in on the waves, and hauling them up the beach. Fishermen in Huanchaco still build and paddle them today.

Run the boat into the surf. Fight the waves. Ride it back to the sand. Sound familiar?

Beach Sprints made its Olympic debut announcement recently, but Peru has been doing a version of it since long before anybody thought to put a clock on it.

The People Who Made This Happen

A team does not cross a hemisphere by accident.

Enrique Villar-Gambetta, Honorary Consul of Peru in Oklahoma, has been instrumental in coordinating the team’s journey to Edmond. Getting eight athletes and a coach from Lima to Arcadia Lake takes a level of logistics most of us never see, and he has been at the center of it.

Giacomo Gomez is Peruvian, lives here in Oklahoma, and is working alongside Enrique to shape the Peruvian experience at the festival. You may already know him by another name. He is DJ Giacomo, and he will be on the Route 66 Music Stage both days. Racing in the morning, music all afternoon, same guy helping pull it together.

A Taste of Peru in Edmond

You do not have to fly to Lima to eat Peruvian food. Zambrano’s right here in Edmond is part of the hospitality welcoming the team, and they are a reminder that Peruvian culture already has roots in this community.

Peruvian cooking is one of the great food traditions on the planet, built from Indigenous, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and West African influences layered over centuries. Ceviche, lomo saltado, aji de gallina. If Team Peru’s visit gets you curious, Edmond has you covered.

Come Cheer On Team Peru

There is something genuinely special about a first-year festival on an Oklahoma lake drawing a national team from South America. It says something about where this sport is going.

Come watch. Bring the family, grab a spot on the sand, and cheer for the athletes who traveled the farthest to be here.

August 29-30 at Arcadia Lake in Edmond. Free festival, just a $ 10-per-car lake pass.