Finals, Keramas: “Italo a grinning, vicious Piranha!”

Italo Ferreira surprises no one by stomping Michel Bourez to win the Corona Bali Protected… 

Four heats to an inevitable conclusion, for both guys and gals. Italo surfed, we might as well call it now, the most dominant final heat in Pro Surfing history. 

Lakey Peterson, slightly less so, but still good enough, despite leaving a last minute door ajar for Tyler Wright, to take the Title and yellow leaders jersey going into Uluwatu. 

The sport of Pro Surfing after the embarrassment of the Founders’ Cup wave pool event with it’s phoney drama and hideous aesthetics, now moves into another comp at Uluwatu with more momentum than it has had for years. 

If the non-surfing management bobbles this opportunity and fails to reverse the wavepool pivot the ground is now undeniably paved for a Rebel Tour with Indonesia as it’s central stadium. 

Forgive the blag but when historians parse the 2018 year I’ll be front and centre row for identifying Italo as surfing at a different level to his peers from the git go.

Yesterday, we warned that by priming his neuro-muscular system with huge (unmade) air attempts that if he stoinked one today it would, as Lupe Fiasco would say, “This is top flow better look out below, pennies from heaven is the same as a semi from the second…and I reign supreme.”

Jordy had no choice but to look on helplessly as Italo picked waves under priority then struck like a cobra, time and time again. Including the big air, noiselessly and perfectly greased for a ten. You can argue the rotation involved, the effect was undeniable. 

The day started with Mikey Wright and Bourez. Mikey had the strategy of trying to put Bourez under early scoreboard pressure. The idea was correct, the execution had flies all over it. Bourez waited, and waited and with thirteen minutes remaining finally lanced a set wave flawlessly with power carves that have seamless all week. Pottz maintained the masterful Bourez proved a man matured at thirty, some might add ten years to that, considering Kelly’s era defining airs at Bells and New York were done on on the wrong side of that number.

The judges have been schizophrenic on scoring tubes all week. A head-high tube at Keramas is not a difficult endeavour. The local plumber here will thread those things all day every day until the crack of doom. It’s what comes next that has to determine a score.

It was all over after the first exchange, as soon as Bourez backed it up Mikey looked brittle and failed to make an effective challenge. 

Italo’s weakest moment came in his opening ride against Jordy in semi two. A failed ride that seemed completely incongruous. Jordy skipped away with two strong waves. Strong waves but conservative surfing, considering what could be done.

The judges have been schizophrenic on scoring tubes all week. A head-high tube at Keramas is not a difficult endeavour. The local plumber here will thread those things all day every day until the crack of doom. It’s what comes next that has to determine a score. 

Italo showed that what could come next was both huge and lofty and perfectly executed. There was no way he could have pulled it off if it wasn’t for all the failed attempts, not just in freesurfs, but in the pressure of competition.

Italo showed that what could come next was both huge and lofty and perfectly executed. There was no way he could have pulled it off if it wasn’t for all the failed attempts, not just in freesurfs, but in the pressure of competition. That ten-point ride seemed to open the floodgates and Italo went into the final with every single neuron firing in sync towards a common goal. 

This time the strategy of putting scoreboard pressure on Bourez worked perfectly. Italo opened with razor-sharp attacking raids on sub-set waves and put Bourez into a situation of slow bleed out under the torpor of a listless ocean under a tropical sun.

By ten minutes in, the final was effectively over with Bourez in hard combination and Italo in a feeding frenzy, a one-man piranha grinning viciously while mowing down anything in his path. 

Eights followed sevens and nine’s followed eights. An end-section air rotation lofted and covered feet as if he was shot from a cannon.

All I ever wanted watching pro surfing was a chance to transcend this earthly realm and to see what was possible on a wave, with the beauty of the ocean as backdrop and it’s moods and vicissitudes as natural drama.

Today delivered that, and more. 

Will this celebration of what is good and righteous in pro surfing be pearls before swine, trampled to pieces in a rush to technological solutions? 

Time will tell.

See you at Ulus, mf’ers.