Italo Ferreira after the opening round of the 2019 ISA World Surfing Games. Photo: Pablo Jimenez/ISA
Italo Ferreira just made a guy named Dylan Southworth the unluckiest Olympic hopeful on the planet. If the current World #6 hadn’t made his opening round heat at the ISA World Surfing Games – a mandatory qualifier for the 2020 Tokyo Games – Southworth would have been gifted Olympic destiny from the surf gods themselves. But that’s not what the surf gods had in mind.
Ten minutes to go. Finish in the top two of what’s now just three surfers instead of four and it’s onto the next round for Southworth. “Is this a near-free pass through,” he had to be thinking. “Wait, sh**…is that Italo on the beach? That is Italo on the beach. He looks frantic. Whatever, he doesn’t even have a board. Maybe he got hurt and had to bow o– wait, is Filipe Toledo handing him a board??? Ok, well, he’s wearing jean shorts he’s obviously not dressed to su– Nope. Nope, he’s definitely putting on a jersey. Ok but still there’s literally only nine minutes left in this heat now and he’s comboed with last priority of four– ok, seriously???”
Italo’s first wave: a 2.23. That wouldn’t have put much of a dent into the combo situation. But then Ferreira posted a 5.13 and an 8.33 on consecutive waves to pull off the impossible, winning a heat the universe clearly did not want him to. Southworth would have finished that opening round in second with a respectable score and moved on. Instead, Ferreira’s jean-shorts-borrowed-board miracle ended the Mexican surfer’s time at the 2019 ISA World Surfing Games as quickly as it had started.
So why was Italo Ferreira running into the water with a borrowed board, less than 10 minutes to go, and dressed in jean shorts? It was definitely a hellish series of events.
“I was robbed 4 days ago in the United States,” Ferreira wrote.
His passport had been stolen. And with a quick turnaround between the ISA event in Japan and the Surf Ranch Pro immediately following back in California, he’d need a Visa to ensure he could come back to the United States. He’d been advised to leave the States, head to Japan, and schedule appointments there to secure the necessary documentation.
“So I left the United States on September 8 and embarked for Tokyo, with an interview scheduled for the following day, 09,” he described. “It all seemed normal, but MY FLIGHT WAS DELAYED BECAUSE OF A HURRICANE – I even stayed 18 hours on the plane.”
Interview: missed. So Ferreira rescheduled for the morning of September 10 — the same day he needed to be on the beach for his first ISA heat. Miss that and barring some kind of special exemption from the ISA for exceptional circumstances, Italo could kiss his Olympic dreams goodbye. He got his Visa approved in the 8:30 a.m. meeting and rushed off to Tokyo for another flight. Finally, things started going Ferreira’s way. The first heat was delayed by an hour, giving him the slimmest of windows to mabye make his heat.
You know the rest of the story: Italo makes it, Filipe lends him a board, jean shorts glory and all. The guy’s a legend.
