Filipe won the Oi Rio Pro in a final against Jordy Smith. Photo: WSL
Filipe Toledo won the Oi Rio Pro after a dramatic final few rounds. Barrinha turned into a frothing monster on day three, turning the competition into something the Rio event rarely is: a hold-onto-your-hats kind of contest. Filipe Toledo, who was defending his Rio crown from last year, came up against Jordy Smith in the finals, which, as generally seems to be the case, didn’t take place in waves as wild as the previous few days put on display. Still, though, it was a final full of excitement and Toledo absolutely smashed it.
Toledo and Smith have very different kinds of surfing, but both played well to the conditions. Toledo, however, was on a different level in the final. With 12 minutes to go, Smith was in a combination situation. Toledo sat on a 9.37 and an 8.67 while Smith’s highest scoring waves were a 6.50 and a .50. By the time the final horn sounded, Smith was only able to increase that .50 to a 1.93, leaving him comboed and putting Toledo on the shoulders of the screaming fans.
John John Florence, freshly back off the knee injury that took him out of contest surfing for what felt like an eternity, was forced to drop out after re-tweaking it in his heat against Wade Carmichael. The waves pouring through were perfect for Florence to shine: big, wind-blown, and rampy. The temptation proved too much, though. Florence pushed hard off the bottom, lined up the lip, and shot into the sky. The board left his feet and he landed awkwardly in the water. Soon after, the cameras panned to Florence, who was limping down the beach.
“I was going to try and do one turn,” John John said in the post-heat interview afterwards. “It was kind of breaking already, so I went to do a fly-away with all that speed. As I hit it, it kind of just bucked my back leg, which was the knee that got injured last year. It just felt like a really good tweak to it — a bit of pain — so I was just thinking in my head, ‘it’s super powerful out there right now and I get really excited to do airs, so I should just go rest it and try to make sure it’s all good…’ Looking in the long scale of things, the rest of the year is a lot more important for me at this point.”
As it turned out, a quick physio session and a night of rest didn’t make things better, and Florence announced he’d be pulling out from the rest of the event. That meant that Jordy Smith came up against a very in-form Kolohe Andino in the semi-finals. The South African dispatched Andino — who took out Gabriel Medina on his way to the heat against Smith — handily while Filipe Toledo took out Frederico Morais, setting the stage for the finals.
Toledo was ecstatic after his win at home. “I can’t even hear what you asked,” Toledo said amid crowd’s deafening cheers. “I was really stoked. Once I get through the quarters and semis, something clicks with me. Especially here with the crowd. It’s been amazing. It’s been a really hard year mentally.”
Toledo, as all champions do, didn’t count Smith out until the very end of the heat. “Surfing is always an open game. Even with Jordy — even with the 18 points — he can always get a nine and back it up with a nine again. Until it was like 30 seconds, I was starting to calm down. I think this is my event now.”
