Mateus Herdy Doesn’t Want To Be Famous But His Surfing Demands It

Prior to watching this video, I’d never heard the 2018 World Junior champion, Mateus Herdy, talk.

Frankly, I didn’t feel like it was necessary. Mateus’ surfing speaks for itself, and to be quite honest, I doubted that a mega-pro teen would be able to express many profound thoughts in his non-primary language.

I was wrong.  

In this mini-doco above, Mateus provides eight minutes of remarkable wave-riding—or technically, wave avoidance (those airs!)—between short but poignant morsels like:

“Being in the spotlight is kinda hard, because people know you, but you don’t know them…I don’t really want to be famous.”  

and:

“People think that’s it’s really easy [being me], but it’s not that easy. I had to leave my house when I was 15, so I had to grow up very fast.”

and, when given the choices of losing a finger or not going right for a whole year in order to qualify:

“No, I don’t need those things. I will qualify on my own.”

In fairness, if Mateus surfs anything like this clip in his 2020 QS campaign, it seems unfathomable that he won’t qualify for 2021. Let’s get this freak on tour already.