Italian Gent Who Probably Should Have Won Pipe Threads 25 Barrels In A Day (Sans Crowd)

Gotta love a straightforward premise. 

“Six-foot drainers. No one out,” says Leo Fioravanti in the opening frame of his latest edit. 

“I surfed for eight hours that day — 3.5 hours in the morning, and 4.5 hours in the afternoon,” he told me on the phone. “Realistically, I counted nine barrels in the morning and maybe 15 or more in the afternoon. I think 25 is a realistic number for the day. The morning wasn’t easy, but the afternoon was as fun as it gets. It wasn’t 10-foot barrels, but every set was perfect. It was exactly what you dream of in France — perfect wedges 20 feet from shore. You didn’t have to look for a wave. They just came to you.”

Leo’s been in France since the Abu Dhabi comp and has essentially been scoring the whole time. While this edit doesn’t show all 25 of his waves, we doubt it’ll leave you feeling as though you desperately need to see more clips of people pigging out on tubs. And, since I had him on the line, I had to ask him about Pipe. 

“I don’t want to sound cocky, but I know what I can do at Backdoor. It’s not because I’m so good at barrel riding or anything like that. It’s just that I know the wave so well. I’ve spent so much time in that lineup, and I know the different angles of the waves there. That was my second Final there. And on Finals day, every heat was going my way right from the beginning. The Final was the first heat that day that didn’t go my way in the beginning. I mean, it definitely didn’t go my way in the beginning [laughs].” 

Indeed it did not. Barron put up a combined 17.87 points in the first five minutes of the heat. 

“But I had so much time left and I was out the back thinking: If the opportunity comes, I can do it. I waited and waited, and Barron swung on a couple closeouts and some smaller waves. I get it — he was so far in the lead at that point. Then I got that 8, and I could have done a turn after but I wanted to make sure I got priority again. Right at the end, this perfect Backdoor wave came in. I parked it and tried to get as deep as possible, then did two turns. When I got to the beach, everyone seemed to think I had the score. I’d never blame the judges before re-watching it — you haven’t even seen what the other surfer has done.

“It’s crazy. The score took so long to come in. And if that last judge had given it an 8.9 instead of an 8.8, I would have won. I was emotional for sure — I cried a bit. The amount of energy on the beach felt surreal. I did the ceremony and I congratulated Barron. Obviously, he surfed so good. But when I re-watched it, my honest opinion is that I should have won it. Also, when someone comes back from the dead like that and things are that close, usually the surfer who came from the dead deserves to win. It’s like, ‘How the fuck did they do that?’ You should take that into account. But I’m proud of myself. If I look back, I don’t see any mistakes that I made. I guess I’ll have to make a third final at Pipe to win. Third time’s a charm, right? [laughs]”

When we chatted, Leo was in Milan getting fitted for a suit for his wedding in September. He also just re-signed for two years with his apparel sponsor, K-Way. Not a bad sojourn for someone ranked 5th in the world. 

“It’s such a long year. I’m not thinking about the future. I just want to enjoy surfing and get drained.” 

Merci Miky for that.