As we settle into the quiet spaces of Milan’s BasicVillage, the first thing that becomes apparent is a profound sense of calm. Not the composure born of arrogance or self-importance, but the quiet confidence of someone who has spent years earning an intimate understanding of himself: heat after heat, season after season. A confidence shaped by discovering who he is as a person long before defining himself as an athlete or one of the world’s finest interpreters of the ocean.

It takes only a few minutes before one word begins to surface repeatedly throughout our conversation: love. First comes the love for family: the force that accompanied him along a path unlike almost any other. The love for his brother Matteo, and for the friends with whom everything began, as surfing and the sea passed naturally from one life to another, almost by osmosis. If Leonardo Fioravanti is now celebrated across the globe, it is because long before riding world-class waves, he grew up in an environment where that dream was shared, imagined, nurtured, and made tangible every single day.

Then there is his love for the ocean itself: the element to which the surfer from Cerveteri entrusted his life, and through which he ultimately learned to understand the world. A place where one can lose oneself only to be found again, as all great art ultimately invites us to do. The same vast body of water that, after years of sacrifice and relentless travel across the globe, carried him to the summit of professional surfing.

There is also his love for Italy: the unlikely birthplace of one of surfing’s brightest stars. The country of those first Tyrrhenian waves, of childhood dreams, and of an identity forged as much through character as through an instinctive devotion to togetherness. Qualities that continue to define the only Italian surfer to establish himself among the elite of the modern World Surf League.

And then there is Sophie, his wife, who taught him that life does not begin and end in the water. Through her, Fioravanti discovered how to expand his emotional horizon, recognizing the value of moments that endure long after a competition has ended or a victory has faded into memory. The kinds of memories that, by their very nature, exist beyond rankings, or trophies.

Finally comes what he describes as the first, and everlasting, love of his life: surfing. Not simply a sport, but a way of living. A language through which to understand himself. A passport into distant cultures and some of the planet’s most remote landscapes. Above all, a vehicle for personal growth, nurtured through meditation and an ongoing commitment to his inner life: a process that led him, over the years, to question his own motivations before ultimately discovering what all of it truly meant. Surfing, as he sees it today, is ultimately a form of happiness. A pure expression of love.

Shortly after reaching the top of the World Surf League rankings, your thoughts immediately turned to your family. You said: “I love my family: my mom, my grandmother, my brother. There are so many people I need to thank…” Surfing may often appear to be a solitary pursuit, but behind every surfer standing alone in the lineup lies an entire lineage of love, sacrifice, and unwavering support. How important has your family been, not only in shaping Leonardo Fioravanti the athlete, but, above all, Leonardo Fioravanti the person?

“Probably even more important for the person than for the athlete. My family, and especially my brother, taught me everything. I am who I am because of them. Before anything else, what matters to me is being a good human being. Treating people with respect. Staying humble. Those are values my family instilled in me from the very beginning. One of the things my brother and my mother repeated to me over and over was: keep your feet on the ground. No matter what happens, never let success change who you are. Those words have stayed with me throughout my life. When I meet someone, what genuinely interests me is who they are, not what they’ve accomplished or how successful they’ve become. In the same way, if someone walked away after meeting me and their first thought was, ‘Leonardo is a really good person,’ that would mean more to me than being called a great surfer or a great athlete. I consider myself humble. Respectful. And I hope that’s something people can genuinely feel. These values are the foundation of my life. My family gave them to me, and one day I hope I’ll be able to pass them on to my own children.

Family is everything. When I was around eleven years old and already traveling the world to compete, my mother put her own life on hold to follow me. I’ll be grateful to her forever for that. Having her by my side allowed me to stay as grounded and as normal as possible, even though there was very little about my life that was actually normal. While kids my age were going to school every day, I was studying online and traveling constantly, meeting people from different backgrounds and discovering new cultures. In many ways, travel became my real education. And I was incredibly fortunate to experience all of it alongside my family, who never stopped reminding me, wherever I was in the world, of who I truly was.”

You first started surfing as a child, following your brother Matteo into the waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Back then, you were simply a young kid paddling out with a surfboard. Do you still remember what it felt like to catch your first waves?

“It’s been many years, of course, but I still remember how immediate, and overwhelming, my love for surfing was. From the very beginning, it felt like falling in love. By the time I was six, surfing was already everything to my brother and me. While my friends had posters of Francesco Totti on their bedroom walls, I had Kelly Slater. My brother had Mick Fanning. To us, they were legends. At home, the television was permanently tuned to one of the few surf channels that existed at the time. We watched the same footage over and over again, endlessly. It completely consumed us.

The moment we started surfing, it became much more than a sport: it became our way of life. I remember how cold Italian winters could be, especially since that’s when the best swells usually arrived. I didn’t care. All I wanted was to be in the water. There’s a story I often tell because I think it says everything about what surfing meant to us. My mother understood how deeply we loved it, and whenever the forecast called for waves, she’d occasionally pick us up early from school, telling the teachers we had a doctor’s appointment. Instead, she’d drive us to Santa Marinella to surf with our friends. In Italy, good waves might come once or twice a week, sometimes even less, and she knew exactly how precious those days were. I don’t remember the exact moment I realized I loved surfing. What I do remember is an overwhelming sense of happiness, and an irresistible urge to get back into the sea or ocean. From that point on, every family vacation became a surf trip: to France, Portugal, or anywhere else where there were waves waiting.”

Is there something about your roots, growing up on the Roman coastline, in Cerveteri, that you still carry with you as you travel the world from one contest to the next?

“One thing that has always defined me is how emotional I am. I’m a very passionate person. Compared with many Australians or Americans, who sometimes tend to be more reserved about what they’re feeling, I’ve never been afraid to show my emotions, whether that’s frustration or joy. I think that’s deeply connected to being Italian. Passion is part of our DNA. We don’t grow up afraid of expressing ourselves, and that’s something I’ve always carried with me. I’ve remained true to myself because my Italian identity has always been deeply rooted in my character. You can even see it in the smallest things. When I’m traveling, I notice that the way I eat is completely different from many of the other surfers on tour. My relationship with food reflects where I come from.

Then there’s style: the way I dress and the attention I naturally pay to it. I always try to create a certain harmony, a certain sense of coherence, both in and out of the water. That’s not necessarily something everyone in surfing thinks about. Sometimes I’ll see a surfer wearing a red T-shirt, green shorts, and a blue cap, and it makes me smile. They simply don’t think about it: that’s their style, or maybe just the environment they grew up in. I was raised by parents who taught me that when you went out for dinner, you dressed properly. I think that relationship with clothing is also part of our culture: another expression of that Italian DNA.

I’m also incredibly fortunate to speak five languages and to be naturally outgoing. A lot of that comes from traveling, of course, but it’s also part of my personality. Someone who’s very shy may feel less inclined to learn new languages or step outside their comfort zone. I’ve always been the opposite. I’ve never been afraid to meet people, make new friends, or learn. When you travel to places where nobody speaks your language, you’re the one who has to adapt. Surfing, and all the travel that came with it, gave me that opportunity. But I also believe my Italian upbringing played a role in making me open to other people and other cultures in a way I might never have been otherwise.”

Following that thought, you were born in Cerveteri, yet your surfing education unfolded across California, Australia, Hawaii, and many of the birthplaces of modern surf culture. How much did those journeys shape you as an athlete—and how much did they shape you as a man? Is there one place that left a lasting mark on you?

“As I said before, surfing and the chance to travel became my real education. I was lucky enough to start exploring the world at a very young age, experiencing cultures and ways of life that are extraordinary for someone between the ages of twelve and eighteen. All of that has shaped the person I am today. I feel one hundred percent Italian, but whenever I come home I realize that my outlook is probably much more open than that of many people around me, simply because of the places I’ve lived and the experiences I’ve had. Once again, surfing allowed me to meet extraordinary people and cultures all over the world.

If I had to choose one place that truly changed me, it would probably be Papua New Guinea. I traveled through some of its lesser-known islands before making my way into the Sepik River with the people I was traveling alongside. There we met communities and tribes living hundreds of miles away from anything we would consider the modern world. It was an extraordinary experience because I found myself face to face with a reality completely different from my own. Materially speaking, those communities have almost nothing compared to what we’re accustomed to. Something as ordinary as a smartphone or an internet connection simply isn’t part of everyday life. And yet one thing struck me more than anything else, not only in Papua New Guinea, but in many places that, at least on paper, are considered less fortunate: how genuinely happy people seemed.

Some of those communities possess perhaps less than one percent of what we have in material terms, yet they often appear far happier than many of us living in highly developed cities, surrounded by constant connection and endless consumption. That realization has stayed with me ever since. It continues to remind me that, in truth, we don’t need very much to live well. What matters is learning to be content with the life you’ve chosen. In the end, it’s what you do, not what you own, that makes all the difference.”

How did your relationship with surfing change once it became your profession? What happens to your mindset when you’re competing compared with when you’re simply sharing waves with friends? Does competition change the way you look at the ocean?

“Surfing has always come from genuine love. And that’s the most beautiful part of it. For me, it will always be a passion before it’s ever a sport. I simply love surfing. I love spending hours in the ocean. Of course, once you compete professionally, you inevitably begin to see both surfing and the waves differently. You’re constantly analyzing how to approach a particular wave in a competitive setting, how to maximize every opportunity, how to perform at your absolute best under those specific conditions. Precisely for that reason, I think it’s essential to find a balance between competition and free surfing. Every now and then, you need to leave on a trip with no competitive goals whatsoever. A trip where you aren’t thinking about scores, judges, or whether a maneuver would earn an excellent mark. 

Sometimes you just need to paddle out with your friends, find good waves, and surf with a clear mind, without constantly analyzing what you did or what you should have done. You have to let the wave simply happen. Finding that balance is incredibly important to me, and it’s something I talk about often with my mental coach. Sometimes the principle really is that less is more. Stepping away from competition for a while allows you to come back ready to give everything you have. Competition matters, but surfing will always be there. To me, it’s the purest form of meditation in the world. When you’re sharing incredible waves with your friends, with only a handful of people around, and your mind is completely empty, you reconnect with the very essence of what surfing is. And surfing is different from so many other sports. It’s not like swimming or football, where eventually you retire and that chapter gradually comes to an end. I’m certain I’ll keep surfing for as long as my body allows me to. I won’t compete forever, of course. But once my professional career is over, I’ll still paddle out. And I’ll love surfing until the very end.”

Among the people you’ve spent a great deal of time with, both in and out of the water, is Kelly Slater: a figure you’ve already mentioned, and one who belongs not only to the history of surfing, but to the highest reaches of contemporary sporting mythology. What is the most important lesson, idea, or way of seeing the world that you absorbed from him?

“I know Kelly very well. I was fortunate enough to spend years around him, and today I’m lucky to be able to call him a friend. My mother’s partner was his manager for a long time, so I first found myself in that environment when I was only twelve or thirteen years old. To be honest, Kelly has never been someone particularly inclined to give advice or deliver grand inspirational speeches. I had the privilege of being close to him during the years when he just kept winning. And when you’re that young, you’re like a sponge. You learn everything simply by watching. By spending time around him, I began to understand some of the reasons Kelly became Kelly Slater. His dedication to surfing and, above all, the love he still has for it, is something entirely unique. Even today, he’ll paddle out and surf for six or seven hours straight. He loses himself completely in the ocean. He doesn’t really have a schedule for the day. Surfing is the only real schedule. He may not know exactly when it’s going to happen. But if he notices the swell picking up and good waves beginning to arrive, he’ll get in the water: even if he has a meeting scheduled an hour later. In those moments, everything else disappears.

He loves surfing one hundred percent. That is one of the clearest things I came to understand by watching him closely, and it’s something I continue to admire enormously. I wouldn’t say he taught me how to love surfing, because that kind of love cannot be taught. You either have it inside you or you don’t. And I know that I have it inside me completely. What I saw in Kelly was how far that love could go. It’s true that he did all of this in order to win, because he wanted to become the greatest of all time. But I’m convinced that everything he did and every milestone he reached came, first and foremost, from a much simpler place: his almost irrational love for surfing.”

With your victory in El Salvador, you became the highest-ranked surfer in the world. Beyond that milestone, you were the first Italian to establish himself on the World Tour, the first to compete at the Olympic Games, and the first to carry Italy into some of the most iconic places in surfing history. How do you experience that responsibility? And what kind of figure would you like to represent for the future of the sport?

“For many years, I think I measured my career almost exclusively through results. I’m twenty-eight now, and I hope I can keep doing this for a very long time. I’m already in my ninth season on the World Tour, and inevitably a certain amount of experience begins to accumulate. During the first five years of my career on tour, and probably even before that, I thought about my path almost entirely in statistical terms. I have always had an enormous desire to win, and at the same time I carried this fear that I might reach the end of my career without having achieved the things I wanted: the Olympics, a world title, twenty tour victories. I’ve always had a great many goals. Of course, I still do.

Over time, though, something changed. It happened because of the people around me, the meditation I mentioned earlier, the work with my mental coach. I began to understand myself more deeply and, above all, to ask myself why I was doing all of this in the first place. I asked myself: Why do I compete? Why do I surf? Why do I work so hard every day to become the best possible version of myself? The answer I found was that I don’t do it only because I want to win. Of course I want to win. But the deeper truth is that I do it because I genuinely love what I do. I love surfing. And I feel immensely grateful that the thing I love is also my profession. Surfing allows me to support my family, my wife, and hopefully one day my children. I can build a life through the thing I love most. For a long time, that wasn’t something I had really stopped to consider. Recently, I’ve begun to appreciate that perspective much more deeply, and to feel far more grateful for everything I’ve already achieved.

I think about the people beside me, the family I’ve built around myself, the friends I’ve met while traveling the world. Those are the things that will remain forever. I believe that no longer thinking exclusively about winning and, above all, no longer allowing my happiness to be determined by results has changed me profoundly. During the first years of my career, I was far too focused on all of that. Today, by contrast, I am genuinely happy with who I am, with the people around me, with the love I have found, and with the life I lead. I think that realization has helped me enormously, especially this season, in achieving the results I’m now achieving. My mindset has changed. I’ve understood that you don’t need to think obsessively about victory in order to remain motivated. Whether I win or lose, I train exactly the same way the following day. Nothing changes, because, as I keep saying, I love doing it. That way of thinking is helping me in sport, and more broadly in life. 

Sport is difficult. When people say it isn’t for everyone, they’re right: especially mentally. Because you lose far more often than you win. Always. I remember a beautiful speech by Roger Federer in which he spoke about his percentages. He was one of the greatest tennis players in history, he won practically everything, and yet he explained that he had won only around fifty-three percent of the points he played. That means he lost the remaining forty-seven percent. For a long time, I remained trapped inside my defeats. I struggled to move on, to maintain a positive attitude, and above all to preserve confidence in myself. Today, it’s different. I try to learn from my mistakes, but then I move forward, because I know that losing is part of sport. At the moment I’m winning a great deal, that’s true. But I also know it won’t remain that way forever. And I’m conscious of that as well.”

Speaking about your relationship with surfing and your recent success, you said: “What helped me most was learning who I am. Until 2021, I thought only about surfing, and I had never truly understood myself.” What does it mean, for a professional athlete—and specifically for a surfer—to genuinely know oneself?

“I believe it is fundamental for anyone to genuinely understand who they are, what they love and, above all, why they do what they do. I think many people, particularly in sport, begin at a very young age and eventually find themselves continuing along a certain path because, in some way, they feel compelled to do so: by their family, by a father pushing them in a particular direction, by sponsors, or simply by the feeling that they must continue down a road they have already embarked upon.  I was fortunate, because I never experienced that kind of pressure from my family. I have always surfed because I loved doing it. And yet, despite that, it still took me time to fully understand why I was doing it. I had sponsors from a very young age and, particularly during those early years, I felt the pressure that could come from them, or from the media. I constantly had the sense that I needed to prove something to someone. Over the past few years, I have finally understood that I do not have to prove anything to anyone. I do all of this for myself. And that realization has allowed me to live with an entirely different sense of mental lightness. Then I met Sophie, my wife, and she helped me understand that life does not revolve around surfing alone. There are many other forms of happiness. The moments we share together as we travel around the world, for instance, remain meaningful regardless of whether I win or lose a competition. They are memories I will carry with me forever.

Another fundamental step was beginning to work, in 2021, with my mental coach, Stefano Massari. The mental dimension was a space to which, until then, I had never really devoted any attention. For a long time, I thought I did not need a mental coach, that I did not need to talk to someone… Fortunately, I believe that in recent years athletes, and people more broadly, have begun to express themselves more openly and to feel less afraid of speaking about their psychological lives. In the past, there was almost a belief that seeing a psychologist meant that you were somehow strange, or that there necessarily had to be something wrong with you. The fact that more and more people have begun to speak openly about these subjects has helped to make all of this feel more normal. Because, ultimately, it is entirely normal. Talking about your thoughts, your emotions and the deepest parts of yourself helps you understand who you are. Through the conversations I have had with my mental coach, I have discovered a great deal about who I am. I also think the way I experience my relationships with the people around me has improved. Naturally, part of that is also connected to growing older and becoming more mature. I have begun to understand more clearly what the truly important things in life are. When you acquire a broader perspective on what genuinely matters, you also begin to realise that losing a heat in competition is not a real problem. That kind of mindset, rooted in gratitude and in the ability to recognise and appreciate what I already have, has helped me enormously.”

Considering your own personal journey, what does it feel like to have become such an important point of reference for the new generations of Italian surfers? And what would you like to pass on to them?

“I would actually include the new generations of European surfers as well. I do not say that to praise myself, but simply because there are not many of us in European surfing, and that is a fact… There are two other French athletes on the Tour, but historically our continent has never been a major power within the sport. We have incredible waves in many parts of Europe, perhaps slightly less so in Italy, but, more broadly, what has often been missing, and what is still missing to some extent, is awareness. The ability to truly believe that reaching the very highest level is possible. That is why I hope I can inspire not only many Italians, but also a great number of young Europeans. I would like them to be able to think that we, too, can make it.

As far as Italy is concerned, I am profoundly proud to be Italian. I have said it before, and I continue to say it whenever I can. Major achievements and victories are wonderful, but, for me, true success lies elsewhere. During the time I have spent in Italy recently, children have often come up to me and told me that they started surfing because of me. That is real success. A victory lasts a week. Then another competition begins, the world moves on and, in some way, everyone forgets about it. When a child tells me that they began surfing because of me, however, I am faced with something that can last an entire lifetime. As I have already said, surfing is first and foremost a way of life. Once you begin, it is very difficult to stop. Knowing that someone might continue surfing for the rest of their life because, at a particular moment, they found even a small source of inspiration in me can only make me happy and deeply proud. I hope that, partly because of this season, many more children will discover surfing. Perhaps after watching one of my videos or seeing me compete. For me, that would be an enormous success. Naturally, I also hope that, in the future, there will be more and more young Italian surfers capable of joining me on the Tour, or even simply of carrying that dream within themselves.”

At Athleta Magazine, we think of sport not merely as performance, but as an artistic and expressive language. Have you ever considered surfing as an art form in its own right, and yourself as an artist?

“One hundred per cent. I believe surfing is an art form. One of the most beautiful aspects of it is precisely the fact that every surfer can express themselves differently. I think, for example, of Mikey February, a South African surfer who managed to qualify for the World Tour. He is an extraordinary surfer, but his style was not necessarily shaped for competition and, perhaps, he did not possess the characteristics required to spend many seasons on Tour. He chose a completely different path: that of free surfing, which allows him to express himself on a wave in precisely the way he wishes. And that is exactly where the beauty of surfing lies. When you are on a wave, you are free to express yourself however you want. I have my own way of doing so, my own style… Other surfers have theirs. When I watch a surfer moving across a wave, I see an artistic interpretation. There are hundreds, thousands of different styles, and each one reveals something about the person who is surfing.”

Since 2023, you have been a K-WAY Brand Ambassador, a brand that has built its identity around a profound relationship with water, considering it a structural element of its vision. This year, you had the opportunity to develop and design a capsule collection entirely dedicated to you. What was it like to translate your relationship with the sea and your personal identity into an aesthetic language? And in what ways has this collaboration allowed you to express who you are beyond sporting performance?

“As I mentioned earlier, style and the way I dress have always interested me. It is an important dimension of my life. For years, I wanted to create a collection, but I had never been given the opportunity to do so. I found that frustrating, because I felt a genuine desire to express myself through design as well. When I started working with K-WAY, one of the first things I asked was whether there might be an opportunity to develop my own collection. They said yes within one second. I was incredibly happy. That is one of the things I appreciate most about K-WAY: the brand, and the people behind it, are not afraid to do something different, to experiment, to express themselves and allow others the freedom to express themselves, or to explore new directions. That kind of openness immediately struck me. We created the first collection in 2023, which I really liked. I have to say, though, that this year’s collection represents an enormous step forward. The style is incredible. K-WAY has an extraordinary design team, and we had the time to sit down together and exchange ideas. Everyone listened to me. They understood my personality, and what I wanted to create, one hundred per cent. Then we built it together, as a team.

Most of the pieces have a wider, slightly oversized and more relaxed fit, because, for me, the most important thing is that clothes should feel easy and comfortable. I want to feel at ease in what I am wearing. I genuinely wear every piece from the collection in my everyday life: when I travel, when I am at the beach… The cargo trousers, for example, are exactly what I had wanted for a long time. They are incredibly lightweight, and their design also comes from an aspect of my life that people often do not imagine: when you spend entire days on the beach, the weather can change constantly. Sometimes, over the course of just a few hours, you feel as though you have moved through every season. More broadly, I wanted to create something that would allow people to feel good and be ready to adapt to changing weather conditions. I am genuinely very happy with the result.”

One final question. After your remarkable rise and your establishment among the very best in the world, and following all the deeper reflections you have shared throughout this interview, what is there left for Leonardo Fioravanti to understand or discover about surfing?

“I do not think there is anything more I need to discover about why I surf. As I said earlier, I do not live this sport and this way of life simply to win. Victories are something extra, a bonus. I surf because I love doing it. Whether I win or lose, I wake up the following day with exactly the same desire to improve. And I think there is something beautiful about being able to move through life with that feeling: waking up every day with the desire to become better, constantly feeling inspired, and knowing that, ultimately, there is no real limit.

The day I stop surfing will probably be the day I realise that I can no longer improve, that, in fact, I am inevitably beginning to get worse. Then, unfortunately, the time will have come to stop, at least at a professional level. Today, however, I know that I can still improve enormously. I already understood that before my victory in El Salvador, and now I am even more convinced of it. I do not know where surfing will take me. Perhaps towards more victories, perhaps not. But I am ready for the adventure. I want to enjoy it and appreciate it, through victories and defeats alike, but above all through the moments I will experience along the way: travelling with my team, with my wife, and surfing in some of the most beautiful places in the world.”