Reigning world champ Italo Ferreira adds Olympic Gold to collection…
The Brazilian Italo Ferreira pushed hard against the expected narrative of a Japanese surfing gold medal with a triumphant and invulnerable campaign at Chiba’s Tsurigasaki Beach, forty miles east of Tokyo.
Against Japanese-born, American-raised Kanoa Igarashi, a twenty-three year old so flashy you could imagine him walking the streets with a tiger on a leash, the reigning world champion played an intelligent game to easily win gold, despite breaking his board on his first wave.
Of all the gold medal contenders, Italo, who is twenty-seven, was the only one that carries the perpetual ecstasy of the looter.
It’s an old and hackneyed story, but in Italo’s case it’s true: the key to the pro surfing kingdom wasn’t presented to him on an upholstered velvet cushion via a dad that surfed, a benevolent sponsor and a training program where men stand on the beach under an umbrella filming the children for later review of technique.
Italo grew up in a fishing town in north-east Brazil, population eight thousand, called Baia Formosa; a joint where the only paved roads are the ones that lead into the village.
Italo’s pops would wander the beach and buy the catch of local fisherman and make his profit, a slender one but enough to feed his family, selling fish to restaurants.
His skinny son wanted to surf so Pops gave him the foam lid from the box he kept his fish in.
Eight-year-old Italo was so small it just worked on Baia’s little righthander.
Then, and in short order, an older friend who saw the boy’s love of surfing gifted him a fibreglass surfboard, he won the first contest he entered, moved onto regional events and then national, trying to win “cars, motorbikes and tickets to fly overseas.”
The rest, the elevation to stardom, the world title, came quickly.
And, now, gold medallist. The first in history.
Finals day analysis following shortly.