Fifteen years ago Brazilian Uri Valadão won the Men’s World Tour for the first and only time until now in his career. Since then the world title went to France 4x, Australia 1x, South Africa 5x and Hawaii 3x. But never returned to Brazil.
This absence is strange and somehow inappropriate, as Brazil is one of the countries where bodyboarding enjoys good conditions, has an annual great competitive calendar and truly passionate fans that follow the sport and their riders. Bodyboarding has a very unique history in Brazil, which has been part of the sport right since its roots.
But if Brazilians bodyboarders have been away from the world title in recent years, the same cannot be said about victories in events/stops since the first world championship back in January 1982 and the Morocco Pro, the 1st stop of the 2024 world tour in February.
Officially, Guilherme ‘GT’ Tâmega retired professionally in March 2015, after being inside the top 10 list for 18 phenomenal years (12 consecutive years from 1995 to 2006 before taking a year off in 2007, but joined the tour again in 2008). However, his mark and achievements remain to this date. GT is a 6x world champion and for the same amount of times he was also runner up of the world tour rankings.
Nobody has won so many world tour stops as Guilherme did.
He has the record for individual wins amongst all men’s pro riders – a total of 24. Individually, Pierre-Louis Costes, for example, comes in second holding a personal record of 18 wins until today.
In addition to Guilherme’s 24 amazing victories, also Uri Valadão (9), Eder Luciano (4), Lucas Nogueira (3), Paulo Barcellos (2), Melk Lopes (1), Fábio Aquino (1), Daniel Rocha (1), Diego Cabral (1), Luís Villar (1), Leandro Chagas (1), Helliton Loureiro (1), and Gabriel Braga (1) achieved success on the men’s world tour (or world championship), combining in total 50 individual wins out of 209 events run.
If you’re wonder, Australia comes in second with 42 wins registered (spread by 16 riders), Hawaii/USA occupies third place with 38 stop wins (among 7 riders), France comes in fourth with 31 wins (shared by only 3 riders), and South Africa closes the top 5 with a total of 25 wins (spread by 6 athletes).
If we take the ladies’ maths in consideration, Brazilian hegemony increases considerably and the situation becomes even more ridiculous. Out of 147 events, the Brazilian ladies claimed 96 victories, leaving 51 to the remaining nations. Five time world champion Isabela Sousa points a record, to date, of 21 individual wins. Wow!
To finish, when we combine Pro Men and Pro Women divisions, we realize Brazil has won 146 world tour events (out of 356 events) and produced 26 individual winners.
Since 1982 the world championship or the world tour had events run in Hawaii, Tahiti, Portugal, Australia, Venezuela, Azores, Madeira Island, Chile, Brasil, Canary Islands, Japan, Maldives, Reunion Island, Guadeloupe, Indonesia, Spain, Puerto Rico, Mexico, South Africa, Morocco, France, U.S.A., and Peru.
If this isn’t proof that Brazil is the most successful country on the Bodyboarding World Tour, then we don’t know what will be.
