THE PERFECT STORM
Italo Ferreira is sitting underneath a boom mic and a florescent studio light in the front of his house in Baia Formosa when he lets out a big yawn and blinks a set of heavy eyes. It’s been a long day for the 2019 World Champ, to be sure, but it’s also sort of a funny sight, considering how Ferreira tends to come across on the World Tour—an endlessly-energetic, spring-loaded ball of fast-twitch muscle fibers, more akin to an avatar from Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer than a flesh-and-blood wave rider. Joel Parkinson once described him as a “minion who can bounce everywhere.” But while Ferreira can light up multiple heats in a day and backflip off the podium afterward, being a newly-crowned World Champion in Brazil is draining even for him.
When he returned home to Brazil the week after the Pipe Masters in December, Ferreira stepped off the plane with his world title trophy in hand (he brought it as carry-on) and arrived to a chanting crowd of family, friends and fans, who proceeded to parade him through the busy streets of Rio Grande do Norte’s largest city. His day-to-day since then has been a barrage of interviews and TV appearances with some of the biggest news outlets in Brazil. He just finished filming his new reality TV show—“Parque do Italo”—for the Brazilian sports channel “Canal OFF”. Just in the few days before my visit, he pin-balled between sponsor photoshoots in Los Angeles and São Paulo, and within a half hour of arriving back home, he was mic’ed up and at it again—this time filming an ad for, of all things, a fintech startup that helps middle-class Brazilians secure personal loans.
Being a Brazilian World Champ courts a type of sponsorship seldom seen elsewhere in the surfing world. Look at the heavily-stickered boards of Gabriel Medina, Adriano de Souza and now Ferreira, and you’ll see the logos of Ford, Mitsubishi, Audi, Ralph Lauren, Bridgestone Tires, Guaraná Antarctica, Corona, Oi, an orthodontic company and—let us not forget the brand behind Medina’s dolphin-smooth armpits—Gillette.
Waiting for the startup’s shoot to end, so that my interview can begin, I settle into an extra director’s chair towards the back of the space. When it’s not filled with cameras and interviewers, it serves as Ferreira’s gym and board shed, and I spot Ferreira’s money-making sleds
