Photo: WSL
If Italo Ferreira winning his first world title wasn’t exciting enough, Gabriel Medina found a way to make finals day at the 2019 Billabong Pipe Masters even more interesting than the WSL could have hoped for. When scaffolding first went up at Ehukai Beach the best-case scenario was a winner-take-all final for the 2019 world title (which happened). And if you wanted to get really greedy, you were praying Kelly Slater and John John Florence’s race for a spot on Team USA’s 2020 Tokyo roster would come down to the bitter end as well (which it did, with John John getting the spot).
And then Medina said, “hold my beer” with the second interference heard round the world.
Florence vs. Slater went the distance without interfering with the world title race, though. Both surfers lost to the eventual world numbers 1 and 2 — Florence in the quarters against Medina and Slater falling to Ferreira in the semi. Neither heat was ever really in question. It added up to John John Florence holding his year-long lead over his boyhood hero and finally being named to Team USA.
Tokyo dreams for @john_john_florence realized!
He’s provisionally qualified for a spot in the inaugural Olympic surfing competition at the #TokyoOlympics.
(🎥 @wsl) pic.twitter.com/yTtmJ0CAwF
— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) December 20, 2019
But by that point in the day it was pretty tough to be focused on anything other than Medina and Ferreira possibly duking it out in the final. What Gabriel Medina had done in his Round of 16 heat against Caio Ibelli, when he took an interference to block Ibelli from getting a score, had made things too interesting, and however you felt about the Brazilian before the day — love him or hate him — was probably cranked up to 11.
Ferreira started the final hot, taking a Backdoor 7.83 and then a 6.17 at Pipe before Medina even tallied a single wave. You got the sense Medina’s move earlier in the day had planted the crowd at Pipe firmly on Team Stok-ed, noticeably cheering on Italo, the owner of the yellow jersey. Medina immediately staved off being comboed early in the heat before those scores could roll in though, recording a 7.77.
Back to back waves for @ferreiraitalo15 during the Final just now against @gabriel1medina. Watch them both battle it out for the 2019 World Title right now! #BillabongPipeMasters #VTCS @billabong1973 pic.twitter.com/Mxj8mHJC86
— World Surf League (@wsl) December 20, 2019
That momentum held up. Just inside 10 minutes to go, Ferreira extended his lead with a 7.73 and a single finger held up (no. 1?) as both an exclamation point and a reminder that Gabriel Medina’s mojo was gone. Medina held priority in the final minute of the heat needing a 7.80 that never came and Ferreira collected his first world title.
“Congrats Gabe and Carissa too,” Italo said in his post-heat interview, sobbing the whole time. “But yeah, this is my moment.”
The Pipe Masters win was Ferreira’s third tour win of the year and his fifth appearance in a 2019 final. It’s also his second consecutive year winning as many contests. But even those stats don’t give the full context of how hot Ferreira got through the final stretch of this year: second place in France in October, a win in Portugal immediately after, and his win Thursday on the North Shore. Before that streak started, Ferreira was sitting at fifth on the Jeep Leaderboard, leapfrogging Jordy Smith, Filipe Toledo, and Medina — surfing’s now official bad guy (if he wasn’t already) — in less than three months.
Italo Ferreira is your 2019 WSL World Champ. Photo: WSL
