Yuri Sodre

When you are last in the tour ratings with two events left in the season, your life is all about numbers. With two events remaining in the Foster’s ASP Men’s World Tour season, Yuri Sodre was dead last in the ratings, but not quite dead.

The per capita income for all of Brazil is $8100 a year, and a very high percentage of the citizens of Brazil survive on $2 a day or less. Just by making the tour, Yuri Sodre was guaranteed to make a minimum of 11 X $4000 = $44,000 and as the 2006 season went Sodre had already earned $41,000 for a string of 17ths and 33rds, with two events and a minimum of $8000 remaining in the season.

Financially, Sodre was doing okay because although the cost of travel is high, the cost of living in Rio can be very low, depending on how low a surfer wants to go. Sodre has no sponsors, so he is doing it on his own, and as the season was coming to a close, he needed to do something drastic or risk falling off the Tour - again.

Sodre is Carioca and he takes it seriously. He learned to surf at six years old in the beachbreaks of Barra de Guaratiba, and went on to dominate all the Junior events nationally. Out of school in the mid 90s, Sodre hit the road to get an education, traveling to Peru and Sumatra and even a trip to the Galapagos Islands, home of evolution, where Sodre learned a few things about Survival of the Fittest that would serve him well in his chosen career.

Sodre started on the WQS in 1999 and spent a year living in Australia, learning there was more to life than beachbreaks and caipirinha and hot chicks - well beachbreaks and caipirinha, anyway. After Australia he moved to California for another 18 months and furthered his education. Sodre began competing on the WQS in 1999 and made The Show in 2001. He lasted a year, fell out, and battled back for another four years before making it back in 2006.

Sodre's life as a pro surfer was summed up in Portugeuse on the www.globoesporte.globo.com website, but things got lost in translation: "Yuri disputed the tour in 2000. He had the knife and the cheese in the hand, but he wasted. He did not support the rhythm, he released the Tour and he lived two years in the exterior. When he came back to Brazil, tried to change its style of life. He adopted the philosophy of Paramahansa Yogananda, left the house of the parents, released the sponsor and he decided to search the essence of surfing, recommencing of the zero. He took more three years until obtaining to be enters the best ones of Brazil and the division of world-wide access, that classifies to the tour: "I was alone in my generation. I never had friends in the Circuit, nobody to guide me on the places and the competitions. I fascinated myself. He did not have maturity. It was the age - he counts."

What that seems to mean is Sodre made the Tour on his own, without financial or spiritual support, struggled without sponsors, made the tour, fell out, came home, took up Yoga, found a new determination and got stuck back into it.

Sodre is from Rio which means he grew up surfing beachbreaks, but he has more than a little of the Carioca Brazil Nut in him, and he has had his moments in the premium breaks, especially the tropical lefthanders of Teahupoo and Fiji.

Moments, but not enough of them and as the 2006 Foster’s ASP Men’s World Tour made it to the Continent for the Quiksilver Pro France, Sodre summed up life on tour for a Brazilian: "We Brazilians do well in Europe because we surf a lot of beachbreaks at home," he said. to Chris Nelson on www.surfline.com. When Sodre wasn't surfing, he was studying the ever-shifting sandbank peaks, because "We have to be well prepared because we are surfing against great pros. Not only that, but they have better backing, go on trips to spots like the Mentawais. We have to study the waves and work hard just to try to keep up."

Sodre lost to Tom Whitaker in that heat, a victim of a riptides and a shifting tide. He got a 17th at Mundaka and that kept him as Tailgun Charlie on the tour, with no WQS campaign at all. But the second to last event was in Brazil and the final was at Pipe and Sodre is a contender in both those places so you never know.

But if Sodre falls off the tour, don't feel too bad for him. He has spent the last couple of years traveling the world, chasing waves, chasing girls, chasing points and money and if he falls he will land nicely in the bosom of Guaritiba, where there are lots of capirinha and hot chicks, enough to last a lifetime.