Surfing
The world surfing media is awash with the term. Here’s why:
The ‘Brazilian Storm’ features in every magazine, on every website and on the tongue-tip of every beach- and webcast-commentator. Hell, anyone who talks about professional surfing.
It’s not a by chance though, as the Brazilians have finally fulfilled a long spoken-about prophecy and emerged as the vanguard of all things surfing.
Brazilian surfers are renowned the world over for paddling out in packs at foreign destinations, for taking over entire breaks in Indonesia, and for not backing down when there is trouble. This reputation of solidarity has always held them in good stead as a surf nation. Strength in numbers, if you will.
Here and there it has lead to some negative confrontations, where the Brazilian surfer might be seen as being a bit arrogant. Often this is a misinterpretation though and to the more observant Brazilians come across as reserved. This usually boils down to a language barrier.
Underneath that, they’re a really friendly bunch of surfers. Portuguese is the official language and not too many Brazilians have the need or the desire to learn English. One Brazilian surfer, big wave maestro Carlos Burle, learned English many years ago, and has been traveling and surfing big waves around the world for close on two decades now.
A friendlier surfer you could not find, always ready to have a laugh and a chat, Carlos is someone who always remembers your name, even after years of absence, and greets and shakes like a gentleman.
The epitome of competitive tenacity is Adriano de Souza. He is possibly the most hungry and motivated surfer on the planet right now. Growing up in a poor environment in north Brazil made Adriano realize that he has to go all out in order to get what he wants, and that nothing can stop him. As soon as he realized that had the talent and skill to win heats, he has been doing so ever since, often punching above his weight with little regard to more vaunted competitors.
He’s also a friendly sort of guy, but get him in all of his competitive fervor and he is a growling and ferocious little pitbull.
There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that Brazil has spawned some of the most talented surfers of the current generation. When Gabriel Medina won the Rip Curl Grom Search in 2009, the surfing world murmured that he might have some promise as a professional, but not much more than that. They should have possibly taken a closer look at his performance, pulling off two perfect tens in front of 45 of the best professional surfers in the world at a famous beachbreak in France. Now he is a popular world champ. In his world title year he competed with a calm head about him, often doing what needed to be done, and often not taking big chances. Enough for a world title and his destiny, and no one will ever be able to take that away from him.
Spending your life trying to be a professional surfer, but only having small beachbreak surf at your disposal is going to make for some interesting situations. The biggest challenge would be how to get ahead of the rest of the pack when you all have the same conditions day in and day out.
Filipe Toledo decided that the only way forward through the quagmire of Brazilian surfers trying to succeed was to be innovative. So he went out to do just that and become one of the most innovative surfers alive today.
He too succeeded swimmingly in his innovative endeavours and is now a Championship Tour surfer, winning events, and doing the most ridiculous aerial moves that the world has ever seen in a competitive environment. Filipe is going to change the way we understand competitive surfing forever. He simply goes bigger and better in every event he enters and at 20 years old has the world at his feet.
Solidarity; friendliness; competitive tenacity; talent and innovativeness… Now you understand the Brazilian Storm.