Photo: Italo Ferreira // Instagram
Part of the legend of Italo Ferreira is his humble beginnings. He grew up in the small fishing town of Baía Formosa, where the idea of becoming a professional surfer and Olympic champion was far from a common aspiration. “I would probably be a fisherman, there’s nothing where I live,” explained Ferreira in an interview with Red Bull. “Because I don’t like school I would probably be doing something local, like selling fish with my dad. Baía Formosa is still a natural place. It’s a place I go just to surf, to meet my friends and my family. Sometimes people forget about what they’ve been through and they don’t value what they have now.”
However, that all changed with a cooler lid. “I was like nine years old when I started [surfing],” he recalled in another interview. “I was just having fun with the cover of the cooler, and then I just paddled out with my friends. I caught some little waves, just to stay busy because my dad worked all day and I had nothing to do. I was at the beach with the boys playing soccer on the sand and surfing with this cooler box. I was getting more obsessed with that and I tried to surf with my friends’ board and I started to do little things, I started to get better.”
Of course, we all know where that ended up.
Recently, Italo went on a trip where he went back to his cooler-surfing roots. The moment came courtesy of Nike (who has recently returned to the world of surfing after a long hiatus, by sponsoring Ferreira at the beginning of this year), who sent him on a trip to the Amazon rainforest, where he towed behind a boat on the aforementioned lid, just for old times sake. Despite many years away from the DIY surf craft, it looks like he’s still got it.
“Nike has invited me for a great adventure in the Amazon rainforest,” wrote Ferreira in the caption. “Got a chance to surf with a cooler lid while some alligators circled the riverbanks. It was a pretty wild experience!”
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