Getty Image / Joe Scarnici
Brazilian pro surfer Yago Dora, a Volcom sponsored athlete, just won the Lexus Trestles Pro on Saturday and moved from 3rd in the WSL Men’s Championship Tour standings up to second place. I was fortunate enough to catch some time with Yago for an interview on the eve of Saturday’s win and talk about his surfing journey.
The son of a pro surfer, Yago Dora was actually born in landlocked Curitiba, Brazil but his life changed when his family moved to Florianópolis where he would discover his love of surfing. Since Gabriel Medina won his firs WSL title in 2014, Brazilian surfers have dominated the Men’s Championship Tour on a level the tour has never seen before. I asked him about that, as well as Surfing’s mainstream popularity in Brazil over the past decade.
This interview took place on Friday, before he was set to face Ethan Ewing in the quarterfinals. Yago Dora would crush that match-up, winning 15.37-14.63. Yago would the face Griffing Colapinto in the semifinals (who I interviewed here in January) and win that semi 17.23-15.20. Then in the finals, Dora faced Japan’s Kanoa Igarashi and won 17.90-16.07, putting up the highest combined 2-wave score of anyone in the final 16… Now let’s get to the interview below!
Interview With Volcom Pro Surfer Yago Dora
Cass Anderson: :You keep getting better year over year in competition. You were 7th two years ago, 6th last year, and now you’re in 3rd place (*2nd). What, if anything, do you attribute to being able to improve year over year? What’s changed?”
Yago Dora: “Yeah… I feel like I have a lot of drive and a lot of passion for surfing and for competition itself. I feel like competing is what makes me want to be better each year, you know. Trying to be a better surfer, be better on my technique, on my heat strategy, and like picking the right ways, picking the right maneuvers, just being a more complete surfer each year, I feel like that has been my goal. Each year I want to come and bring something new, something better than the year before, and that’s my drive, you know?”
Cass Anderson: “Speaking of goals, you just turned 29, right? Do you have anything you want to accomplish before you turn the dreaded 30?”
Yago Dora: “Yeah, I want to get a work title this year. That’s my goal.”
Cass Anderson: “extreme sports seems to be so wildly popular in Brazil these days, at least compared to a lot of other countries around the world. Has Surfing made its way to mainstream TV down there and do you think it’s more accessible for fans to watch than most places? Or are there any reasons you can think of that Extreme Sports are more in the mainstream in Brazil than some other countries?
Yago Dora: “Yeah, I think it became really very mainstream once (Gabriel) Medina won his first title and our biggest TV company was following him through the whole year, following his whole campaign and they really kind of took him under their arm and promoted the image of surfing and the image of Gabriel as like the new like’sports hero’ in Brazil, you know. And that’s what made surfing so popular I think.
“And then on that year they followed him the whole season he actually won the world title, which was incredible and our (Brazil’s) first world title, right?”
Yago On The Rise Of Brazilian Dominance In Surfing
Cass Anderson: “It’s been now like over over a decade of Brazilian dominance, which is just crazy. I’m from Florida. I grew up with, you know, Kelly Slater as our guy, but to watch Brazil just take over the world surfing scene for over the past decade has been incredible. Do you feel the love from all that surfing dominance from fans when you’re home in Brazil?”
Yago Dora: “Yeah, for sure. I feel like we are… Of course, I’m newer to the whole Brazilian surfing storm thing. I came a little later than like Gabriel, Adriano Felipe… But I feel like I’m part of it as well and it’s just something very special that we are living through. It’s like a special generation of talent that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before out of any like single country, you know?”
“Like 5 guys were dominating the tour… Kelly, Joe, Mick… But they were all like kind of from different places and to see like 4 to 5 guys dominate the whole tour coming from one single country I think it’s the first time we’ve ever seen that. It’s just really, really special to see it and to be part of it.”
Cass Anderson: “Speaking about domination, do you think they’re going into the quarterfinals against Ethan (Ewing), do you have any sort of a mental edge over the last time you guys faced each other in the semifinals in Portugal and you were able to get the best of him?”
Yago Dora: “I don’t know… Like, I don’t know if Ethan thinks of it like that. I don’t think about that. But I don’t know. Maybe the person that has lost the most times on Tour probably has that on the back of the mind, you know? But I don’t know if Ethan thinks about that or not, like I think he really doesn’t take that into account.”
Can’t Travel Without Volcom Jeans
Cass Anderson: “You have an incredible partnership with Volcom as your sponsor, what is one Volcom item you can’t travel without?”
Yago Dora: “I think my jeans for sure. Like my Volcom jeans are there for life, you know? I have some Volcom jeans that I got like when I was like 18 years old or something. I still have them and I love them.
Cass Anderson: “Correct me if I’m wrong but you grew up or you were born in a landlocked city in Brazil, right? And then you came to surfing and got your first sponsor at 15. When in your life and surfing journey did you sort of finally start to believe that you could compete against the best surfers in the world? When did you believe that you had what it took to be a pro?”
Yago Dora: “I feel like the start of surfing for me was a lot more natural, you know, just like surfing because I was having fun with it. And I saw I had like the talent to improve really fast and to get better each year and but at the beginning, I was more into the free surfing part which came more naturally to me because competing is really hard. There are a lot of variables that go into it and the surfing part.”
“I think with free surfing like you don’t need only 30 minutes… You can do a surf trip and be there for 10 days and get like 2 good minutes of clips and that’s like good enough already and I was, I was doing more of that but then to actually adapt to fit my kind of surfing to a competition level was the trickiest part and I struggled at the start… I felt like my level of surfing was already there but just competitively I was not there, you know, and then it took me some time to get everything together and to start feeling confident while wearing a jersey… Then you start getting some good results and your confidence starts to build and you grow from that.”
“Even on my first few years on tour, I was just stoked to be there and be part of it, and I feel like this desire to really fight for the top positions and fighting for titles came, I don’t know, it’s new to maybe 3 years ago or something for me.”
Yago Dora On Traveling The World For Surfing
Provided by Volcom
Cass Anderson: “You mentioned free surfing, when you’re not traveling for the Championship Tour where is the ideal surfing destination trip for you these days?”
Yago Dora: “I don’t know,.. I think Indonesia is still the prime sort of destination, you know, there’s too many waves, too many spots, too many options. It’s like you go there and you know you’re gonna get good waves. That’s the prime destination for sure.
Cass Anderson: “What sort of training do you do outside of the water? Weights/cardio on oyur off days, what does that look like?”
Yago Dora: “Yeah, I have a really complete training routine. There’s not really a specific name for the kind of training, you know, but I do the weights, I do the cardio, I do the mobility, I do yoga also. It’s really complete, you know. I have one trainer that I do everything with like explosiveness kind of training and then I do yoga as well, meditation and stretching.
Cass Anderson: “What’s something that you think Surfing fans would be surprised to learn about you? Or something they just sort of take for granted because you’re a pro surfer?”
Yago Dora: “I don’t know… I think I’m a pretty like easygoing guy and a lot of people lack grit sometimes. That I lack ‘really wanting it’ inside and the people that are close to me know how much I want this and how much I care. I sometimes feel like people on the outside of the sport think I’m just going out trying to surf and have fun but the people that are close to me know how much hard work and how much time I put into this and I think that’s something not everyone knows, you know?”
The Best Style In Men’s Surfing
Cass Anderson: “In a totally hypothetical world, if you could trade surfing styles with anyone on the men’s or women Championship Tour, whose surfing style you admire the most or love the most, who would that be?”
Yago Dora: “My favorite style on our tour is Ethan’s for sure. I think he’s just really pleasing. Like his style is really eye pleasing. You see everything he does… Even sometimes not a crazy turn or anything, but he just has a really good form. He makes it look good.
Cass Anderson: “Do you maintain a strict diet at all when you’re traveling? Or do you try to hit on any specific foods around competitions?”
Yago Dora: “No, I don’t have like a really strict diet that I feel like. I’ve been eating really healthy since I was a kid because of my family. My dad was a surfer. They also worked with a restaurant, a health food restaurant in Brazil when I was a kid and I always had the information of like what’s good for me and what’s not so it was always natural to me that like ‘OK, maybe I know this is not a good idea to eat this today or eat that’ you know? I just try to stay away from the sugar as much as I can and just just eat good, you know, like I don’t have any restrictions. I eat meat, I eat fish. I eat everything.”
Major congratulations go out to Yago Dora on winning the Lexus Trestles Pro. It was a stacked field and he came out on top to win his second title of the season. Dora previously won the MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal presented by Corona Cero back in March.
Make sure to go throw him a follow on Instagram at @yagodora. And for a recap of the Men’s and Women’s Finals, which was won by Bettylou Sakura Johnson who I also interviewed last week, you can check out this video here: