Presented by: Capi Bar - Video by Francisco Neves

Solid waves broke all along the Uruguayan coast yesterday and one of its best surfers, Luisma Iturria, took home the wave of the day and the DUKE barrel of the month.

The former Latin champion and multiple Uruguayan champion seemed to have died in the middle of the round in this blow but he came out glorious.

“The barrel was crazy, I swear, did you see when the big one came in? I was in position and I went for it, I said to myself: 'I have to go for it, I have to go for it'. And you saw when everything was falling into place, the bottom well, the rail well fitted, the board projecting speed, the wave throwing lip strokes in front and passing them all,” said Luisma.

And he added: “It seems like it keeps getting you down, the wave keeps getting more complicated because the mouth of the tube kept getting too far away, the foam was eating away at my legs, the wave was spit out once… It spit out twice… I swear I’m getting goosebumps as I tell you about it! I always saw the mouth really far away and at one point I even started to get really low towards the end, I was saying: 'That’s it, enough, it can’t be that it’s going to keep giving me life, if it closes here I’d be exhausted.'”

“At one point I pushed myself and the board didn’t lose speed, it was gliding inside the tube and when I saw that I was coming out I couldn’t believe it, I was screaming and going inside the tube… When I came out I couldn’t believe it,” concluded the Uruguayan.