Leonardo Fioravanti Has A New Vlog And It’s Actually Kinda Watchable

Vlogs: you say you hate them, but you probably watch a few. This might be one to add to the guilty pleasure list. 

Leonardo Fioravanti is a smart, funny, and self-aware cat. So I take him on face value when he says, “I don’t want to be cheesy. I don’t want to be fake. I want to be myself.”

I think he did a pretty good job of that in ep 1. The problem is, hamming it up gets the clix (see Jamie O et al). So we’ll see if Leo stays the course. 

In this ep, Fettuccine samples France’s first swell of the season and competes in a miserable-looking surf event. On the latter point, I have an idea that I wanted to share. In retrospect, I might have brought this up before, but it still concerns me so here we go again. 

Around the 10-minute mark, Leo faces off against Italo Ferreira in the semis. Leo connects a few decent waves for sixes, then Italo does a big backside punt for a high-8 and the heat win. But upon closer inspection, I’m wondering if Italo actually landed the air. 

This is a truly subjective debate but one I feel is worth having. Because to my memory, Italo has used this same type of recovery countless times in his career, and unless it is addressed he will likely continue to do so.  

This is how it works:

• Italo does an air and lands off-balance, typically with all his weight on the front foot. 
• Italo lays back in the whitewater
• While he’s down, Italo’s back knee kinks outward and his foot comes off the tail pad and toward his front foot, leaving his butt/thigh to land on the deck
• From there, Italo places his left hand on the traction pad to lift himself up and get his back foot back on the board, then stands up and rides away. 

Another example of this (though it’s slightly less clear) would be the one he did in the 2019 ISA World Games finals, where he received a 10. 

To me, the fact that Italo lands with his butt/thigh on the board and needs to use his hand as a makeshift foot to stand back up renders the move highly imperfect. While I wouldn’t say it’s entirely incomplete (like Slater’s 4.17 at Lowers), it should definitely detract a major portion of the air’s score. Perhaps around half. (Stace G on the other hand thinks it’s fully incomplete.)

This is something that judges need to look at carefully and scrutinize with a more critical eye. Because scoring a highly contentious version of a maneuver with excellent numbers takes away from the airs that Italo actually greases, like that one at Keramas in 2018 or the six he did in Portugal last year. 

Good to be talking about pro surfing again, eh?