Italo Ferreira Wins on Home Soil, Caity Simmers Secures Spot in WSL Finals

For the pure spectacle of it all, the theater, the story lines, the shenanigans, the crowd, the emotion, the suspense and the drama, the VIVO Rio Pro stands out as one of the events of the year.

What the event lacked in wave quality it made up for with pure emotion and crucial storylines as top five contenders battled it out in the men’s and women’s with Italo Ferreira powering to a famous hometown victory in front of a delirious and unbelievably large home crowd. On the women’s side, 18-year-old prodigy, Caity Simmers, used her peerless, progressive, Oceanside-honed beach break attack to claim her third event of the year and lock down a spot in the top five. But not before being pushed all the way by Brazilian wildcard, Taina Hickel, in the elimination round – the Californian getting the narrowest of victories by 0.5 before cantering to victory from thereon.

The Brazilian world tour event has long been the bane of many tour surfers' existence. Slater was famous for skipping it and the prospect of traveling halfway around the world to surf a formless, junky, city beach break hardly screams Dream Tour. Unless of course you’re Brazilian. In which case it is the event you want to win more than any other. This in itself has proved a curse for the nation’s title contenders, namely Medina and Ferreira, who have time and time again crumbled under the pressure of hometown expectation.

Coming into the event, Gabriel Medina stated his intention to win the event if it was the one thing he did this year. The World No. 8 has been simmering away in the back half of the year and arrived at the event in need of a big result to rocket himself into top five contention ahead of the penultimate event at Cloudbreak. As challenging as the conditions were, junky beachbreaks have a strange ability to sort the wheat from the chaff and that was the case here in Brazil. Come quarterfinal time, the entire top eight, bar Jack Robinson (who lost out in the round of 16) lined up, creating the most intense round of competition this year. Medina drew Griffin Colapinto, a surfer in desperate need of a result to halt a slide down the rankings following a last place in Tahiti and a controversial loss to Brazilian Joao Chianca in the round of 16 in El Salvador.

Related: 2024 El Salvador Pro Recap: Next Level High Performance Surfing

Under all the pressure in the world facing a deafening home crowd, Griffin appeared calm and non plussed on the runway as the announcer introduced him and Medina. His dedication to mindfulness training was writ large as he calmly made his way into the lineup and dropped an absolute hammer first wave – a layback closeout lip line kapow – that was the rail turn of the event, netting him a 6.00, which turned out to be the only score of consequence in the slow, high-tide heat. He backed it up with a four for the win as Medina scoured the lineup unable to find anything over a 5. The result may well have been different had Medina managed to fashion an exit out of a miraculous closeout tube only to come up millimeters short handing victory and a more-than-likely top five birth to Griffin Colapinto as we head to Cloudbreak.

With one Brazilian heavyweight and top five contender down, two more remained in Italo Ferreira and Yago Dora. Yago, the defending Rio Pro champ, arrived at the event in a red hot run of form on the back of quarter final finish in Tahiti and a runner-up in El Salvador. He and Italo were responsible for every excellent heat score in Brazil, racking up two heats over the 16.00 mark a piece. Ranked 8th coming into the event, Yago needed something special to make his way into the top five and he produced, taking down World No. 1 John John Florence in the quarters, to claim revenge for their final in El Salvador, in what was one of the heats of the event. In a see-sawing affair that saw several lead changes, Yago finally closed it out with one of the highest single wave scores of the event, a 9.17, for the biggest wave of the day in which he glued a critical layback lip line hack in the pocket on a big cupped out section reminiscent of Tom Carroll’s iconic Pipeline layback snap, followed by a series of grab rail hooks, critical top turns, snaps, wraps, and tail slides.

On the other side of the draw, Italo was going ballistic, whooping the crowd into a frenzy with a theatrical display of turned up power hacks and signature high-velocity backside and frontside rotations. His frontside full rotation traveller into the wind against Rio Waida in the Round of 16 had the commentary booth on their feet before he closed out the heat with a nine for a Formula-One-hairpin grab rail hook in the pocket straight into a big rail tap air reverse on the end section to earn him the highest combined total of the event, a 17.5.

After getting the better of Connor O’Leary in a hard fought quarterfinal contest, he met Griffin in the semis and Griffin’d him with a huge buttery backside over rotated air reverse right off the bat for a 9.00. To his credit, Griffin did not go away, dropping some big air reverses of his own for a pair of sevens to apply plenty of pressure to Italo but the will and determination of this iconic Brazilian battler proved too much as he backed up the 9 with a 7.6 for a critical layback hack in the pocket followed by a potentially injurious, De Souza-esque tail drop floater on a dangerous barreling section for the win.

An Italo vs. Yago final could not have been more fitting and pandemonium like we’ve seldom witnessed before reigned as the pair took to the water. Caitlin Simmers had to stop multiple times in her victorious post-event interview due to the deafening crowd as the two Brazilians put on an old fashioned air show; a clinic in Brazilian beach break acrobatics for their delirious compatriots watching on in the shore break. While it might be a bitter pill to swallow for many Australian and American surf fans, you had to admire the passion of the fans and the unique celebration of Brazilian surfing culture and identity in this final. Capoeira mixed with jinga mixed with skating, and obviously surfing - all of which Brazilians are masters of - has created a unique and undeniably dominant strain of surfing, and this was the purest form of it. Italo got the win with a signature frontside air reverse for a 7.00 followed by a series of equally signature backside snaps for a 6.67 while Yago attempted to keep pace with poppy punts and rotations.

Related: Italo Ferreira Claims 2024 Tahiti Pro, Shakes Up 'CT Rankings

With two event wins from three starts, Italo has created a dramatic change in fortunes following a dismal start to the year in which he almost missed the cut. He now finds himself 4th in the world heading into Cloudbreak, having unseated Jordy Smith from the top five. With back to back runner-ups, Yago moves up two spots to sixth in the world putting world number five Ethan Ewing under a ton of pressure as we head to Cloudbreak.

For the women, it was tough going in Brazil with not a single combined total breaching the excellent 16.00 range. A raft of poor performances from the top five, four of whom found themselves in the elimination round, and all of whom were eliminated by the quarterfinals, bar Simmers, saw the top five remain static. The exception being Johanne Defay who drops out after yet another strong performance by Hawaiian Gabriela Bryan, who defeated Molly Picklum in their high stakes quarterfinal, to claim the 5th spot heading into Fiji.

Sawyer Lindblad’s second runner-up this season looks set to net her WSL Rookie of the Year honors. Though all the talk heading into Fiji is about tour veteran, Tatiana Weston-Webb and her late season tilt at the top five. A semi-final finish in Rio, on the back of another semi at Teahupoo, and a host of spellbinding performances in the consequential Pacific arena, has her well poised for a solid result at Cloudbreak and a last gasp promotion to the Top Five to contest her third Showdown at Trestles.