Watch: The Curious Tales of Italo Ferreira // Trailer
Scripted like an 'Eight Mile' on waves, Billabong's upcoming biopic on Italo Ferreira describes his journey from son of a poor fisherman on the impoverished northern coast of Brazil to surfing world beater.
Full film due in two months time.
Comments
True champ...
Looks like quite a story.
Italo makes some of the other Pros seem to be surfing in slow motion. Those wild airs is heavy situations are super gutsy from a injury risk viewpoint. Poor Connor Coffin had to almost commit suicide doing ridiculous spins in the Strickland's shore (rock) break to try to seem relevant.
I reckon Italo and Medina put more (unspoken) fear into the competition than anyone ever because they have to consider going so far out of their comfort zone in their air moves to compete. Many pros must now wake up sweating at midnight after nightmares of horrific knee and ankle injuries in some mutant shorebreak in their quest for ... a few dollars and a lot of stress. Not quite the fun party circuit of decades ago.
Yea John John is the only guy that can keep up with Medina and Italo and he’s almost permanently injured.
Italo has definitely dropped some of sickest 2s the tour has ever seen, others riders probably would have got sevens. I guess the judges are scoring Italo against Italo and not his competition.
2015 Rio final b/t Toledo and Durbridge epitomises the headspace of most on tour when it comes to facing up to one of the Brazilian flyers. Bede was essentially resigned to defeat at the commencement of the heat, combo'd in the first 5 min. He was literally 1 1/2 times the weight of Felipe, close to retirement so these new age popsicle backside/frontside air-reverse hops were way beyond his strengths. Nevertheless, he did manage to land a small one near the end of the heat. most importantly to the roaring applause of the Rio crowd.
Legend
@Frog,
Following on from your last para...
In recent years the average age of the pro surfer has gone up and up. In the late-70s Rabbit was called "over the hill" at 24, MR went into semi-retirement at 26, and Tom Carroll was positively ancient when he retired at 32, yet these days that's the average age of CT pros.
I predict the average will come down, and drastically, as big airs become the primary weapon to win heats, especially if this movement away from great waves continues. Already there's a slew of QS aerialists lining up to claim waterbound scalps.
Thing is, there's a lifespan on big aerial surfing. We can already see JJF reining it in.
If the movement from great waves continues will their still be a tour? Watched a few minutes of Rottnest here and there and it was bloody woeful.
Yep, Parko used to pull massive airs.
For the surfer who knows the risks, the HUGE airs over radical sections or heavy shorebreaks are a bit like seeing a radical parkour jump between buildings for the first few times or early MMA fights - shock and awe at the risk and novelty.
But that fades with time.
Also, for the keen surfer such moves are so far from our reality and to me would feel like a clunky jerky, speed killing move, so do not inspire me to imitate or even mind surf - unlike a huge JJ face carve.
I admire Italo's speed and face moves, just like I did with Taj at his peak at Snapper. But the huge airs are taking professional surfing down a bit of a dead end that many aspiring pros might not want to follow or end up injured. And, the audience will eventually get bored and wait for the train wreck injury or a shark scare to jolt them out of their turpel induced stupor.
By the way, the surfers are mostly ripping like never before.
Imagine them at sizeable Cloudbreak! Really good waves will remain a spectacle.
I disagree Frog. I used to skate a bit and it reminds me of the guys that would go large in huge bowls or big sets of stairs. They have a particular mix of crazy and talent, and it's very impressive to see in the flesh. I now see it on the Tweed a bit when a pro is passing through or some of the top local guys are hitting huge sections. You have your regular shredders, and then these guys go another notch up, going large on sections where everybody else is backing off a bit.
I understand. Being in the water seeing radical moves and heavy waves live and close up is always 10x more impressive than on video.
But on video even Chopes and Shippies can become passe. Whereas I would absolutely love to sit in the channel and watch those spots live.
Italo is a big novelty factor right now for me included.
Good point Stu and I personally think it is becoming very predictable and he uses them all the time as he can even if they are not really necessary which adds to the sameness.
Great surfer but....
A little off topic...I reckon same/same is the issue here. For me, and I'm speaking as old-school, the aerial as a move in general requires impressive skill but there are only a few degrees of separation in the quality of the movement, height and positioning that differentiate them. They're also not a great platform to display style in my opinion, either. As a result I find them pretty boring after the first couple. I'd put Clay Marzo's incredible layback things in the same camp.
In this context, proper rail surfing rarely gets old or boring as it requires every aspect of a surfer's repertoire to do it. As an old-schooler, I think it's also something that I can relate to a little, cos my air game starts and ends with either a free-fall/lip launch or a bail-out over the back.
But I reckon the key issue which affects modern pro surfing is that so many surf with the same approach and the same style elements that the only substantial difference seems to be how tight the turn is. The women seem to still have a greater degree of individuality in their styles, and while they're not as interesting in their dynamics for me, they're way more interesting for their styles.
No argument here and the wave quality lately hasn't helped. They desperately need to cut the number of surfers and go to Indonesia somewhere on a boat and have those guys in high quality, hollow waves with some wall. Looking at what Josh Kerr has been doing over there on a twinnie to my eyes is so good and far more creative. The WSL are really stuck between a rock and a hard place at present and when Ryan Callinan says he had to change his style to suit the judges - not good as it reinforces sameness and conservatism.
Nah, not really. If R'Cal didn't change his style viewers would be hard pressed to split him from Damien Hardman circa 1988.
In most instances, the pressure to evolve and innovate pays dividends. The best example is ADS who became a whole new surfer between about 2012 and 2014, and it paid off with a title in 2015.
Good point and ADS is now good to watch, however don't you see a sameness to the whole thing at the moment which seems to hark back to the dark days of the mid 80's? Maybe it is just the small, nothing waves thus far on Rotto, surfing at this level really does need large, quality surf to get the ooos and ahhs happening (the big day at Margs was great fun). Didn't know R' Cal was so such a scrapper he looks awesome at present.
That's gonna be a movie worth watching!
Italo has made surfing more exciting. Even the non surfing members of my family are glued to the screen when him or Gabriel are in a heat. So good to watch!
Does he explain his hair colour?
There's daylight between Italo/JJF/Medina and the others for me right now. I'm partial to JJF but there's only so much punishment that knees can take from a lifetime of surfing/skating and his best days are behind him in terms of being 'world champion', if that even matters. I've been watching a lot of pro surfing because of work from home and it seems as though they could cut the tour numbers in half or more and nothing of value would be lost.
Surfing when scored is subjective but for me when ascertaining skills, it can be very objective and indeed it is in skating with how they compete using the game of S.K.A.T.E. No-one can match those 3 ATM in the air, in the juice or on rail. No matter how pretty Ethan Ewing's turns are, it's all for naught if he can't punt like the others.
The only downside I see is that maybe they're inadvertently selecting surfers with the body type of an Oompa loompa (Italo/Caroline Marks) and we'll see more in the future. Maybe pro surfing has always been an Oompa loompas game?
Gab's 360 in the semi was underscored IMO - it was as if he was glued to the board and lost no distance traversing the wave - all ho-hum apparently, given his 7. something score. A few years ago we wouldn't have believed our eyes! He makes the Aussies and others look very pedestrian. Unless we can develop that sort of commitment/repertoire Aussies days of winning CTs are doomed. BTW where is the conest write-up? PS Well done Sal.
Aussies blow goats
I have proof