This Is How Italo Ferreira Became The Best Surfer In The World

Italo Ferreira didn’t “explode” onto the Championship Tour in 2015. He made the tour after only his first full year on the Qualifying Series, and to date, he’s still never won a QS contest. Think about that, he’s won more CT comps last year than his whole QS career. How could anybody have seen him coming?

There were only a few people that really had an inkling of what the skinny kid in oversized Oakley Frogskins was capable of.

Italo’s dad was a fisherman. He’d bring his son down to the beach. And like something out of an old parable, young Italo grew bored with fishing and taught himself to surf on the lid of his dad’s styrofoam cooler. Not content to cast in his father’s footsteps, surfing was a ticket to another life. 

Jadson Andre reportedly unearthed Italo from the Brazilian backwaters, bringing him to the attention of his management team. That led to a relationship with Silver Surfer Surfboards, who do all of Timmy Patterson’s boards in Brazil.

Patterson had also been doing boards for Adriano De Souza, Wiggolly Dantas and other South American notables. Once they collectively got Italo off cooler lids and onto proper surfboards, the sky was, quite literally, the limit.

One air at a time, the WSL just dropped a “greatest hits” compilation of Italo’s meteoric rise. There’s no shortage of high-flying highlights, but that no-handed bomb at The Box may be the best harbinger of what’s to come as he continues to explore the surfing universe.