Vitor Oliveira

Italo Ferreira claimed the 2024 Tahiti Pro in firing eight-to-twelve-foot surf at Teahupoo. It was an incredible day of competition in Tahiti with some of the biggest performances of the year coming from the world's best, posting 27 excellent rides in only 15 heats. Teahupoo displayed its true power and beauty during this memorable event with the world's best surfers. These competitors have put the world on notice ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games when competitive surfing will return to this location in late July. Coming into the Tahiti Pro, Italo Ferreira had only made finals day once in 2024 and was 16th in the rankings. The 2019 world champion was in desperate need of a big result if he was to have any chance of booking a spot in this year's WSL Finals. He started the day with huge wins in his Round of 16 and quarterfinal heats and built unstoppable momentum on his way to his first final in Tahiti. The win today propelled Ferreira 11 spots up the rankings in...

Vahine Fierro won the 2024 Tahiti Pro in huge six-to-ten-foot conditions at Teahupoo. In a unique season where the location of this WSL Championship Tour (CT) competition will be the same as the Olympic Games Paris 2024, Teahupoo hosted incredible conditions for the women's quarterfinals, semifinals, and final today. The women continued to push the boundaries of what we've seen in competitive surfing in the massive and heavy waves, further evidencing what the world's best surfers are capable of in waves of consequence.  Fierro became the first Tahitian local to win the Tahiti Pro as a wildcard. Not only was Fierro's win impressive from her performances throughout the day, but she also faced incredibly tough competition on a day that saw the bar raised by a number of women. Hailing from the outer island Huahine, Fierro and her family relocated to Teahupoo as she and her sisters began to focus on their competitive surfing careers. Fierro's time and experience a...

Polyurethane (PU) foam is not the original surfboard blank. The first-ever boards were made using natural wood from Wili Wili, Ula, and Koa trees. The PU revolution of the 1950s brought a light and resistant core to the surfboard-shaping industry, but it also brought multiple environmental and health issues. The need to find alternative sources led to the development of algae, cork, and mushroom-based sustainable blanks. They all have fewer negative impacts on the ecosystem and can be turned into high-performance surfboards like any other standard PU equipment. Agave is one of the stars of the 21st century thanks to its weight, density, flexibility, and easy-to-work features. The Century Plant But where does this plant come from? Agave is a genus of monocots native to the hot and arid regions of the Americas, particularly Mexico and the Southwestern United States. Known for their rosettes of tough, fleshy leaves, agaves are succulents, meaning they have adaptations for storing...

For reasons I cannot explain, I only became aware of Jerry Seinfeld's work in my mid-40s. I guess it's just what it meant to be. I grew up watching and laughing at British comedy TV shows and getting used to the dryness and fine irony of Monthy Python and their disciples. As a Generation X guy born in 1977 and growing up in Europe, America inspired and entertained me in other ways, but humor was not on top of the list. I remember watching a few seconds of "Seinfeld" on national television, here and there, but I never quite got hooked enough to follow it. Interestingly, it coincided with my early surfing years. Like many young people of my generation, I learned to ride a wave by myself around 1991. My first surfboard - the only one I regrettably sold - was a Mike Davis. While I was living the best days of my life with my heavy 6'2, Jerry Seinfeld was rising to stardom from NBC to the world. Time goes by at the speed of light. Suddenly, it's the Netfli...

Carissa Moore is one of the 18 ambassadors selected by French fashion house Dior to represent the brand at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The five-time world champion surfer ranks among the elite group of sportswomen chosen for the marketing campaign put out by the luxury label. The publicity stunt features the female athletes in creative scenarios and poses. Moore, 31, was shot by photographer Lindsay Ellary riding a pair of scissors and getting barreled inside a navy blue velvet fabric, tarp surfing -style. Dior has also featured French skateboarder Louise-Aïna Taboulet in the photo series, which will be displayed at Le Café Dior in La Galerie Dior in Paris from July 24 to September 9, 2024. High-Fashion Riding As part of the advertising campaign to mark the announcement of the new ambassadors, Dior presented its alternative version of the sports uniform and several noticeable elements, such as a branded bicycle, skateboard, and tennis racket. The list of Paris...

The shaka gesture is about to become the official gesture of the State of Hawaii. Hawaii House Bill 2736 HD2, introduced by Senator Glenn S. Wakai, which proposed the adoption, establishment, and designation of the shaka as the official gesture of the State, passed the Hawaii State Legislature on May 1, 2024. Consequently, Governor Josh Green will decide whether to sign it into law and make it effective and valid across the Hawaiian archipelago. However, Green has already supported the shaka bill and is expected to ratify the document in June. It's an unprecedented decision, as a gesture has never been confirmed as the official symbol of a US state. The approved bill notes that while various ethnic cultures and resident groups in Hawaii have added different layers of meaning to the shaka, there is a shared agreement on its positive sentiments and use in sharing aloha , fostering connections, and promoting pono (righteous living). The legislature also recognizes that the sha...

There is a big difference and many steps between prohibiting and allowing an action or behavior when one faces an extreme or hazardous situation. It is understandable and acceptable that some people, organizations, and leaders choose to play it safe, adopt more conservative attitudes, and make more cautious decisions, while others prefer the free will way and leave the assumption of responsibilities in the hands of others. In other words, if you were the mayor of a city and had information indicating that a storm would endanger fellow citizens who approached coastal areas, what would you do? Would you prohibit access to the coastal strip to avoid putting lives in danger, or would you just issue a severe weather warning and high surf advisories for these areas? And if you decided to ban access to areas close to beaches, would you impose a fine on offenders? Making decisions is about making choices. In May 2024, the Hong Kong government issued a controversial warning following th...

The invention of the surf leash has always been controversial. The debate over who should be credited with attaching it to a surfboard is still ongoing. But we've gathered the pieces of the puzzle. Surfboard leashes are one of the sport's greatest 20th-century innovations. Imagine riding a tall and heavy wooden-based longboard in overhead surf. Every time you got caught by a sneaky set or had to overcome a powerful whitewater wave, the chances you'd be unable to hold on to your craft were high. Consequently, your board would be swept away toward a sandy or rocky shore, and you'd be left in the middle of a chaotic lineup with no chance but to swim in to recover it. In most cases, surfers were lucky to get out safely and unharmed, but their surfboards had different fortunes. They would be either lost to currents and the open ocean or crash into headlands or rocks near the beach. With wipeout, it was essentially the same. And whenever you successfully finished a r...

Umm Suqeim Beach, also known as Sunset Beach, is the home of surfing in Dubai. Here's why and how the Emirati surf break became a swell magnet in the region. Nothing is pure coincidence, but there's hardly any resemblance between the infamous Hawaiian Sunset Beach and the Arabian Sunset Beach. Well, maybe the water temperature. And that's it. But there are reasons to stay positive and open-minded if you're a surfer and visit or live in the former crane capital of the world. Despite facing the nearly closed Persian Gulf, the Dubai shoreline gets its best waves thanks to the low-pressure systems forming at the northern end of the Gulf, near Kuwait, and the strong northwesterly winds that blow past Bahrain and Qatar. But there are no miracles in geography and oceanography. Waves are created when the wind blows over large surfaces of water, creating ripples, wave trains, and swells after traveling long distances. The Persian Gulf, also known as the Arabian Gulf, is 6...

AllWaves is a new wave pool technology from Belgium that allows surfing on an artificial lake, thus bringing surfing experiences closer to enthusiasts and landlocked surfers. The number of artificial wave generation systems is growing fast, anchored on multiple unique selling propositions: wave height, wave frequency, pool capacity, energy consumption, investment, installation time, etc. AllWaves is a product of Belgium, a country often known for its high-end chocolate, beer, waffles, and fries. Its natural appearance and design allow infinite wave variations, and it's the brainchild of wave energy expert and surfer Steven Nauwelaerts  In 2020, after a decade of experience in offshore energy production combined with years of exploring surf breaks from Spain to Sri Lanka, Steven partnered with his cousin and serial entrepreneur Geert Nauwelaerts to create something new. Their goal was simple: to create the world's safest wave pool, with a natural look and feel that increas...

Welcome to "The End of the Road," one of the nicknames for the Paris 2024 Olympic surfing venue, Teahupoo. Surfing is one of the most spectator-friendly Olympic sports to watch on the television or a computer screen. After a promising debut in Tokyo 2020, shortboard surfers are set to ignite the warm, transparent Tahitian waters with eye-catching tube-riding skills and spectacular aerial maneuvers. Here's everything you should know to follow the world's best surfers and one of the planet's biggest and most challenging waves . The Venue: Tahiti The Paris 2024 Olympic surfing competition will take place in the small village of Teahupo'o, southwest of Tahiti, French Polynesia. The first person to ride the infamous surf break was Thierry Vernaudon in 1985. He was followed by two legendary bodyboarders, Mike Stewart and Ben Severson, the first foreign riders to taste this unique and dangerous wave. The word-of-mouth spread, and this unique tropical surfin...

Activists from the anonymous Brandalism collective have replaced more than 200 commercial adverts across London, Manchester, and Bristol with satirical artworks protesting Shell's efforts to "fast track the apocalypse" ahead of the oil major's annual general meeting (AGM) in London. Brandalism's clandestine installation of satirical posters on billboards, bus stops, and tube carriages aims at Shell's marketing strategies to maintain its reputation during its expanding fossil fuel production and recent u-turns on green pledges. Several poster artworks, designed by nine artists, critique Shell's sponsorship of athletes and sports and its targeting of youth culture, which the group says are PR tactics reminiscent of the tobacco industry. One by artist and surfer Michelle Tylicki shows American pro surfer Sage Erickson surfing over dead fish and oil drums in a multicolored oil slick, and the words "I'm Fuelled by the Ocean." It's a direc...

The waves at O2 SurfTown MUC are rolling. Europe's largest wave pool opens in Summer 2024 in Munich, Germany. The basin has been filled with water, and the 34 pneumatic chamber machines have produced the first artificial waves. Endless Surf, a wave generation technology powered by WhiteWater , is making its grand debut with a stadium-sized surf lagoon in the capital of Bavaria. SurfTown MUC is a 180-meter-long wave pool featuring four different surf zones, each allowing a maximum of 16 surfers simultaneously. It's over 50 percent longer in length than a football pitch. The one-hour sessions guarantee a minimum of 12 wave ride attempts per surfer. The Munich wave pool will be open seven days a week, all year round. During summer, it opens at 7 am and closes at 10 pm. In winter, only extreme weather conditions may force closures. The non-heated water temperature will be around 24 °C (75 °F) in the warm season and potentially below 10 °C (50 °F) in wintertime. Up to 2.1...

If you exclude the tandem surfing discipline, competitively speaking, surfing is often portrayed as an individual sport. Also, it's one of those sports in which you rely more on what you do than on what your opponent is doing. Surfers competing in a contest are supposed to perform well enough in front of a judging panel to earn high scores and progress through the ladder tournament-style event format. You expect a surfer wearing a jersey to focus on what they can do on a wave better than anyone else, particularly their heat opponents. So, surfing is unlike tennis, judo, boxing, or even chess, in which individuals interact directly with their opponents to try and win a game or a combat. However, in competitive surfing, doing your best to win does not mean you don't have to worry about your opponent. Not only you do, but you should. In other words, surfers can prevent their opponents from taking the best waves in order to block their chances of maximizing their scoring p...