RICARDO CAMPELLO - LIFE AS A PRO WINDSURFER

RICARDO CAMPELLO –

LIFE

AS A

PRO WINDSURFER

Ricardo Campello is one of the most exciting and talented windsurfers in the world. Huge jumps, even bigger wipeouts, a smooth wavesailing style and let’s not forget a few freestyle world championships make him a people and fellow professional’s favourite. Life on the PWA tour would definitely be less colourful without him but what about Ricardo’s view of being a pro. Known for wearing his heart on his sleeve, Ricardo candidly writes in his own words on his life as professional windsurfer. Funny, truthful and revealing, read on for an insight into life at the top of our sport, warts and all.

Words & Photos John Carter

(This feature originally appeared in the September 2015 issue of Windsurf Magazine. To read more features like this first, Print and Digital subscriptions are available. Prices include delivery globally for 10 x issues a year!)

The Life
People that I know regularly think being a professional windsurfer is a perfect life, don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about it at all, if I wasn’t a pro windsurfer I wouldn’t know where I’d be sitting right now! On one of my 4 flights to Gran Canaria I thought I’d write to you guys on what life as a pro is really like.

Right now I’m sitting at Zurich airport waiting for my last flight to Gran Canaria, I just came to pick up my new boards and hopefully as soon as I get there I can hit the water. It’s really really amazing and cool to be a pro windsurfer, especially if you dreamed about windsurfing since you were a kid! It’s probably the coolest experience you can have but it’s simply not as easy as everyone thinks and sometimes it’s really hard to be travelling all the time and to have a personal life!

I started competing when I was 15. Of course back then everything was a dream and easy, 15 years old, leaving home to travel the world alone for the first time! I actually was supposed just to go from Venezuela to Austria for a week as I had a wild card to get into the event. I was sort of already sponsored by JP/Pryde but I didn’t know the bosses, which were Martin Brandner from JP and another guy from NP, but they knew about me through Josh Stone who I had met before and put in a really good word for me. Anyway, there was no wind to compete, but enough for me to get planing and sail a bit. Martin was really impressed and invited me to the annual photoshoot in Maui, so I didn’t get back home for 3 months and didn’t go to school. Suddenly I had become a pro windsurfer, which was amazing! My first year I won my first PWA event and finished 8th overall, 2 years later I was world champion for 3 years in a row, which was another dream come true. But then you start to grow up and get older and start seeing things differently. You start to miss home, miss your food especially friends and family and my dogs as well. Back at that time I had my first girlfriend and I was really missing her and she couldn’t come to any events with me because she had school, plus her dad was very protective ha-ha!

“ If I wasn’t a pro windsurfer I wouldn’t know where I’d be sitting right now! ”

Homesick
I think one of the hardest parts of being a pro windsurfer for me is leaving home, it’s horrible. Sometimes I just don’t want to leave; I always miss my own bed or bathroom. I just get over hotel rooms sometimes. Hotel food for a week or two is amazing, but after that you start to get over it. There’s nothing like home made food and in my case, my mom owns a really nice restaurant in front of the beach I sail back home, so I finish sailing, eat and then go back out sailing! Sometimes I go to an event early, for example Pozo I normally go 3 or 4 weeks before the event starts and sometimes I make everything “accidentally” to miss the flight or not to go! It’s funny I’ve spent a lot of money changing flights but it’s just that I’m not mentally prepared to travel and to leave home and leave my friends! But suddenly I just get ready and go!! Of course if I’m scheduled to leave a day or 2 before the event I always go, but I still get nostalgic.

Once I get to the place, I get used to it. Depending on the place of course, Denmark and Sylt for example, (sorry if you are Danish or German) no offence, but it’s just a place that I don’t enjoy being on; for me it gives me a bit of a sad and grey energy. I’d rather be somewhere else than in those places, but my point is sometimes a pro windsurfer has to go to places you don’t really want to be, and let’s be realistic, conditions are not really dream conditions for a pro windsurfer compared to surfing for example! I really enjoy sailing at these places most of the time but sometimes I really don’t ha-ha and I’d rather be sailing on a really sick wave on sunny and clear water. Sometimes we are there waiting for conditions and one of our friends just sends us some pictures of a nice swell that he just got and we just want to be there!

Sometimes I really want to take a year off tour just to really do what I want and spend time at home and just travel to places I really want to travel to, not only windsurfing, snowboarding for example. It’s something I’ve never done in my life and it’s one of my dreams but I never have time and when I do I really want to spend time at home with friends and family and not get into an airplane for a while! But if I do take a year off I will also probably miss everything and everyone and probably lose my sponsorship. After a month or more of travel I just want to go back home. I’m a really sentimental person and depending on the place where I am, I get sad or happy and in places like I mentioned above I don’t really get in my happiest mood but again, it’s part of my job ha ha.

Excessive measures
One of the really annoying parts of been a pro windsurfer is the gear. The gear when you are traveling becomes part of your family, like a small baby at airports, everywhere you go you have to take it with you and not take your eyes off it with all the airport restrictions now. Most of the time you’re alone and I have to carry 7 bags on my own and I can only carry 2 at one time. Sometimes the airport people or security see them alone for 30 seconds and they start complaining that you can’t leave your bag unattended, it’s so annoying , they don’t understand that I’m not an octopus with more than 2 hands and can only carry maximum 2 bags at one time and they are heavy. Some airports are just so hard for windsurfers, you have the parking really far from the check in, then you finally get to the check in sweaty from carrying all the bags, then you have to discuss with the airline agent that 4 bags is one windsurfing set and they keep telling you, ‘you have to pay for 4 bags’. I get angry very easily in some cases, especially if you’re rude to me and most of the airline agents are rude. I normally tell them what ever comes in my mind with respect but once they start getting disrespectful and rude I just explode. I had a case once in Miami where one lady called the police because I was talking to her trying to explain to her that I had 2 bags which was one windsurf set (in American Airlines rules) and she kept telling me I had to pay for 2 bags and I really didn’t, so I was calling her and she kept pretending she didn’t see me and she clearly did, so I touched her so she could see me and she freaked out because in the US you are not allowed to touch anyone. Anyway she called the police and I had to explain to them the situation and one of the police men gave me the reason she wanted to press charges against me – for touching her! Ha-ha, the things you see in the US! But in the end she didn’t press charges! Anyway after finally getting to the check in tired and discussing with airlines and paying a lot of money for the windsurfing gear to get on the plane they finally tell you ‘Sir you have to take your bags 2 floors and put them on the over weight belt!!’ and I’m like WHAAAT?? I just paid 450 dollars for my bags and I still have to carry them down? Arrgh, anyway sometimes it’s a real night mare traveling with so much gear, this is when I say I should have been a surfer or a kiter! Hahaha they just travel light, sometimes when I make trips without gear it’s like a dream; it’s so easy to travel with only your clothing bag! But most of the times for me it’s never like this!

No party
For 14 years I have not spent my birthday at home, except for 2009. My birthday is in July and I always spend it in the Canaries, it’s amazing, I mean I have many close friends on tour but it’s not the same as spending a birthday at home with family and closer friends and make a huge party in my house. In 2009 I was finally able to make it because the Pozo event finished 2 days before my birthday, my best friend who is like a brother to me has his birthday the next day after mine, so we did a huuuge party at my place with all our friends and it was a pretty fun party! But that was the only year I was able to do that! No one can really celebrate their birthday while we are in competition! But again, that’s one of the negative things of travelling so much!

Relationships
Venezuelan Girls are probably the most jealous and protective girls in the world. I would love to have a stable relationship and yes I love Venezuelan girls. I dated many really nice girls and they wanted some serious relationships, but after a while before getting too serious they get so jealous that they start thinking wait, he is a pro windsurfer, travels all around the world, meets a lot of people, a lot of girls, ‘’famous” in a way, is in magazines etc, spends 3 or 4 months away from home, and they start to get so jealous they call off the relationship but I’m totally the opposite of what they are thinking!! And yes I get hurt because some of the time I already liked them so much, so yes it’s hard to have a relationship because of so much travelling! In some cases I just want to STOP and be near someone I care about.

One of the best things of being a pro windsurfer, especially compared to other sports, is that we are all a big family, I mean I have some friends that are not into the windsurfing world and they ask me, do you guys stay at the same room and travel together and compete against each other, and I’m like yes of course, we are all family. For example Robby Swift and Brawzinho and I always train together, talk and travel together and stay in the same room most of the times. In competition when we compete against each other there is no rivalry or to any of the other pros, we are very united outside of the water and when we lose against each other we always keep helping each other regardless. When I lose a heat, like most of the other guys, we go and shake hands, if you compare it to many other sports you probably won’t really see that, some of them hate each other. Now with the live scoring we have our phones with the scores and when one of us is competing we can tell them from the beach if they have to do a better jump or take a better wave ride. We are all friends when we are not competing, we go out, we laugh, joke etc! Everybody pretty much supports everybody. Of course there is always a few people that are not as friendly as others but by and large the close friendships and camaraderie on tour is one of the beautiful things about pro windsurfing .

“ The close friendships and camaraderie on tour is one of the beautiful things about pro windsurfing ”

All good
Being a Pro windsurfer is the best thing that happened to me, I really don’t see myself doing something else, I am not complaining but I just wanted to tell you that is not easy and it has lots of negatives. I travel around the world, meet many people, different cultures, I know people all around the world thanks to windsurfing and a lot of them really respect me and I’m sure I have many open doors wherever I go, there are really amazing people and friends all over the world. It’s an amazing way to see the world, I love to take pictures everywhere I go and save them on my computer and post some of them on my social media and show my friends when I go back home. I’ve seen amazing places, met amazing people and basically travelled the world and I still have a lot to know, a lot more people to meet and a lot of spots to sail. I’ve travelled over a million miles and all my life and the knowledge I have, I owe it to WINDSURFING, WINDSURFING IS MY LIFE!!