Jack Robinson is one of my favorite surfers in history; I like not only his innate ability to barrel, his aerial game, his attitude in heavy waves, his curves... The Australian is a beast.

At the same time, Italo is not one of my favourite surfers at all: I admire his hard work, his ability in the aerials, his drive in competition, his passion and his talent for attacking heavy sections. The Brazilian does not have a picturesque style, he has made it at will, a tiger who showed that with desire and discipline, coming from anywhere in the world, you can achieve impressive things; but he is more of an acrobat than a natural like Jack.

Without going any further, we can review that note in which he and his physical trainer emphasize how important it was to lift weights and gain strength to do aerials and from this win stages of the tour and Olympic medals: The strategy worked out perfectly for him and that's how he won his world and Olympic titles.

The judges have bought that backside aerial time and time again and it's perfectly respectable. It's their job and they felt that surfing was worth more than doing a turn.

I, perhaps more old-fashioned, prefer surfing with basics, a curve over acrobatics. It must be an old thing.

Having said all that, especially knowing the level at which Jack Robinson can surf those walls at Bells, I think the Australian gets high marks, or Italo low marks.

I, who say that Italo abuses aerials and often lacks the good fundamentals that Jack has, in Bells and especially in that quarterfinal series he surfed with good fundamentals, with variety, with radical curves and without leaving room to “potentially hit it harder.”

While Robinson was kicking his board from side to side at the bottom, Ferreira was riding up and down a single line, cutting through the water like it was hot butter and exploding into radical sections from start to finish.

In contrast, it seems to me that in neither of his two waves did Robinson give his all, even though he did that nice surfing with good fundamentals that is so valuable at Bells, but he was extremely conservative for what he surfs.

I am usually tough on the Brazilian, but this time it seems to me that he came out on the losing end.