By Erika Scafuro

The power of pro surfers like Jordy Smith is that, beyond competitions, they manage to convey so much enthusiasm for the essentials of surfing as taking hours of travel just to ride a wave.
This is what South African pro surfer, currently ranked fifth in the top five of the WSL, did last year marked by the pandemic and the deletion of all the championship events. And this is what you can see in the Red Bull film dedicated to him, Shaping Jordy.

Born in 1988, Jordy grew up in Durban, the third most populous city in South Africa, and he was introduced to surfing thanks to his father Graham, known shaper. Since he was 12 Jordy has always traveled around the world for competitions, becoming a professional WLS athlete and achieving great results.

Jordy earned second place of the World title of Men’s Championship tour in 2010 and 2016. And since that year has always remained in the top five of the world ranking.
Without detracting from the other achievements, but the two in Jeffreys Bay, South Africa, will be forever the most important for Jordy. He won the first two Championship Tour in 2010 and 2011 in his homeland and in a place that is is part of South Africa surfing history. In J-Bay Jordy earned a great victory, surrounded by family and friends and celebrated as an hero by the crowd.

As told in Shaping Jordy, for 13 years Jordy has never been home in South Africa during the winter, which is best time of the year for surfing. Last year Jordy used the stop of the WSL tour to do something different. He decided to do a surf trip along the coast of South Africa, from Durban to Capetown together with the surfer Mikey February.

His mind, always focused on the competitions, appreciated that time to live the journey with a different approach.
The movie, in addition to showing the power of nature in South Africa where you can surf in the company of dolphins and whales and where the landscapes are so stunning, shows how surfing is closely linked to travel, and how the desire to surf a certain wave leads you to drive for miles.

In the end, the final words told by Jordy Smith, contain the best way to describe his mindset: “I think the more I free surf and the more I score those really good days, the more I grow and I fall more in love with surfing. You know i often think to myself if that’s even possibile, but I do. I just continue to get that excitement where you’re just choimping at the bit to be able to get on that next swell, to be able to drive all hours of the night, to be able to get anywhere you can go just for that single wave, you know. It’s the greatest high ever”.