In a Margaret River apartment complex best described as urban correctional facility (cubist cells, tiled floors, small aluminum windows overlooking a central courtyard), World Tour surfer Italo Ferreira, 25, is pacing the floor plan, waiting for the sun to be sufficiently elevated and the waves crowded enough so he can go surf.
It’s the shark thing, his desire for company in the water. In 2018, Italo and Gabriel Medina put their muscle behind the cancellation of the Margaret River Pro after two hits by great whites on the same day. When it became known that a pair of Brazilians, one a world champion, the other a perennial contender, drove the cancellation, response from locals was blunt. “As someone who’s surfed all over the world, and with the machismo and bravado of Brazilians in particular, I thought it was amazing how cowardly those guys were,” said best-selling Australian author Tim Winton, who grew up surfing around Margs. “I thought it was a really low act on behalf of those two guys. Because, also, there’s a professional aspect to that. They’ve just given themselves a professional advantage in the competition. At one level it was weak of them. At another level it was conniving.”
Gabriel ain’t around to correct the record today, but Italo, let me assure the reader, is driven insane by the thought of attack. He and his girlfriend, Disney Brazil host and singer Mari Azevedo, have been in Margaret River for a week by the time I sit down with them. After Italo’s surprise early elimination from the Bali event at Keramas, they got on a plane the same night and flew to Australia.
For the first four days, he didn’t get wet.
Inconceivably, there were no other tour surfers there yet and the locals in Margaret River only get interested when the surf gets bigger than six foot. It was a conundrum for Italo. He needed to train, but he didn’t want to lose his famously thick legs. “It was just too scary to surf,” he says.
When the crowd did show up, Italo did everything he could to at least affect some sort of control. Before each surf he checks a shark app so he “can stay out of the sharks way,” he says. At Margaret River Main Break, he never paddles out or lurks in the channel, preferring the keyhole and rocks to spending longer than necessary in the sharks’ lair. He keeps his legs up on his board, stays in a pack, and rarely scouts
the horizon for sets, instead examining the water around him for fish.
Mari, who shoots video of Italo surfing using a basic Canon setup with a mid-length zoom, will launch a drone to check the lineup for sharks from above—which is only effective when the ocean is clear. During Italo’s time in the water she’s instructed not only to snatch all his waves on camera, but to keep an eye out for fins or suspicious splashing.
“It’s not comfortable, you cannot focus,” he says. He engages with a smile. He thinks. “Maybe if I win [the contest] I’ll get a shark [tattooed] on my back, a big shark!” (He doesn’t win the event, of course. John John Florence waltzes into that hundred gees, although Italo does finish a helpful-to-his-world-title-campaign fifth.)
When you interview Italo who, along with fellow young Brazilian, Yago Dora, is rethinking the lines a goofyfooter can draw on a righthander, it’s not the usual exchange over a table in a cafe or at the beach: face-to-face, recorder in the middle. Instead he and Mari make a Brazilian-style lunch of beans, chicken, and sliced banana.
Now, surf talk!
DR How do you feel today?
IF I feel amazing. I just got out of the water and I catch a lot of waves.
DR What is your life like?
IF It’s a quiet life. I do nothing crazy. I don’t like parties and those things. I just like to wake up early and surf and get a good breakfast and back to the water again. When I go home to Baía Formosa, I don’t have a lot of time there so I try to enjoy every single moment. I surf and I film and I have a quad bike so I can do crazy things on the beach. I have a sports car, too.
DR Do you ever question your life?
IF For me it’s all perfect. I’m living the best life.
It’s a quiet life. I do nothing crazy. I don’t like parties and those things. I just like to wake up early and surf and get a good breakfast and back to the water again. When I go home to Baía Formosa, I surf and I film and I have a quad bike so I can do crazy things on the beach. I have a sports car, too.
DR Localism. Riff on it for me.
IF I hate it when there’s too many locals. You say hello, they blank you, and they catch all the waves. I’m one of those guys who likes to catch a lot of waves, so I don’t like it. One day when I was young, I catch the wave off this other guy and he pushed water into my face and tried to fight me. It was a bad thing to do. I was only 12.
DR Surfers who influence you?
IF Gabriel [Medina] and Filipe [Toledo].
DR Describe growing up in a little Brazilian surf town.
IF I start to surf at 8 or 9 years old. I was, like, a fast learner because we have nothing to do there.
DR What was your first surfboard?
IF I didn’t start with a surfboard. My father buys fish to sell at the restaurants and, because I was so small and so skinny, I was able to surf with the foam lid from a box. After that, a friend gave me a board and then I started to compete. I started to win contests. I tried to win cars, motorbikes, tickets to fly overseas.
DR How long do you surf in a session?
IF It used to be for three or four hours. Now I try to surf for one-and-a-half hours to save my body for the contest. Those things are a marathon. I’m not the crazy guy I used to be in the past. Instead of one five-hour session, I have four surfs in one day. I think it works better.
DR How many waves will you catch in one hour?
IF Maybe thirty, thirty-five. I catch a lot of waves. I always try to get away from the crowd so I can catch waves because I like to surf and not sit there. I don’t like places like Margaret River where there’s just one peak and you only catch one wave in thirty minutes.
DR Do you remember your first air?
IF I can’t remember because I’ve done a lot. All the guys from the northeast of Brazil, the first maneuver you learn is the air because we have small, shitty waves—one foot, strong wind. So you stand up, go fast, and do an air. That’s why Brazilians have more of a faculty to do airs and it’s why we have a problem with barrels and big turns.
DR Let me talk to you about Bells this year. You’re the defending event champ and the world number one after winning Snapper. First, you get thrown against the Winkipop cliffs, your apparent drowning broadcast live, then you get called on the most technical interference I’d ever seen, an overly punitive response. Talk to me.
IF The interference? When Jordy [Smith] dropped into that wave he was in the whitewater and I saw clean face for him. I got out of the wave and I was like, this is not an interference. After I got to the outside I heard, “Italo, you just got an interference against Jordy.” I was, like, fuck those guys. Later, I saw the photo of Jordy on his stomach and holding his board in the whitewater, and I’m pulling off the wave, 30-feet away.
[Mari interjects that it was a new rule, and this instance was the first time it had been exercised in competition.]
IF All the Brazilians do crazy things. So they’re always trying to change [the rules] because we’re always so hungry. We do everything to win. That’s why the rule changed.
DR In this instance, it was Jordy, a South African, who did everything to win when he spun around in the dirt. A very Slater-at-Huntington sorta move.
IF He tried to play the game with the rules.
DR Were you ready to swing when you came in?
IF Yeah. I punched the locker and broke everything. I almost broke my fingers. That’s how I put all the negative things off. By punching back!
DR There’s an arresting photo of you in tears on the stairs at Bells, Mari comforting you. That was after your brush with mortality at Winki, yeah? Tell me that story.
IF The wave smashed me and my board hit me in the face. I was under the water for thirty seconds. When I came up I saw the jetski coming, but there was a set behind it and he couldn’t get me. That’s why I think to paddle to Winki. I catch the whitewater and go to the stairs there. I was standing there and someone say the ski is coming, so I jump back in the water but then another set came and it was hard for the ski to come back.
MARI AZEVEDO No one was talking about it! Nothing! I was asking the microphone guy, “What about Italo?” The jetski was on the outside and no one was on the inside!
DR How were you feeling, so close to the beach and the crowd, but also so close to being skewered in front of 10,000 people?
IF I was trying to breathe, to stay relaxed. But I was nervous because I didn’t know what was going to happen. After that I asked the locals and they said, “One guy dead at that place, many years ago.”
MA The first thing he told me was, “I thought I was going to die,” and then he started to cry. It was crazy.
IF That’s why I’m staying on the stairs, without energy, nothing. I can’t feel the legs. I stayed there and tried to breathe.
DR Is it painful for you to lose?
IF I feel a lot of pain.
DR What do you do with your money? Half-a-mil in prize money in the past year or so alone ain’t a bad windfall.
IF The first thing I did when I started to get money was to buy a hotel and a restaurant for my dad and my mom. Now I just think about my future because I’ve taken care of them.
DR Describe for me your idea of a perfect wave, real or otherwise.
IF A left, something like Teahupoo. This is the best wave I can imagine. Warm water, clean, no seaweed, and barrel. That’s a perfect wave.
DR You’re anti-drugs. Tell me why.
IF Oh, I hate drugs. I never smoke and I never try these things. I hate that. Drugs make you go…down. A lot of my friends do drugs, and two or three died because of drugs. You have two ways to go. The good one and the bad one. It’s a choice.
DR What do you think your path in life is?
IF To be a good guy that everyone can remember.
DR Why do you think you can win a world title?
IF Perseverance. And I have the talent. I have a piece of paper with all my goals written on it. I can’t show it now but when I get a world title, I’ll put a photo of it on Instagram.
DR How often do you look at it?
IF When bad things happen I go and look at the paper. It puts my mind on the way again.
