“Signature Team” Brazil – Video

Levi Lenz, João “Janjão” Henrique and Ian Mouro released their latest windsurfing vid called “Signature Team”. It’s a more than 15 minutes long film, which shows freestyle and wave action filmed in Brazil, Peru and Maui. “We made this clip to present windsurfing at a party organized by our sponsor “Signature”, which sells surf wear and sponsors us. We wanted to show our lifestyle on and off the water and show how a sport can bring you to so many beautiful places,” Levi and Joao told us.>Levi Lenz, João “Janjão” Henrique and Ian Mouro competed on the PWA tour, but have disappeared again and focus on smaller competitions and having fun on the water. We have hooked up with Levi and Joao to find out why they pulled out from the PWA competitions and why Levi hopes that Brazil will not win the FIFA World Cup. Watch a great film and read a honest interview with Levi and Joao.

Filmed: Levi Lenz, Cleiseon Silva, Joao Henrique | Edited: Joao Henrique

Spots: 

Brazil – Ceara, Icaraizinho, Jericoacoara, Camocim, Taiba, Pecem, Paracuru, Fortaleza, Pacheco, Praia do Futuro
USA – Maui at Ho’okipa and Pe’ahi (Jaws)
Peru – Pacasmayo

Continentseven: You are mainly free riders? You compete in several competitions from time to time. You did the PWA tour with success, you Levi and Ian, are competing on the AWT wave tour, but it looks as if competitions are not your first choice. Why?

Levi: We do like to compete, I think competition pushes your limits and you can learn faster when you are under pressure, and also is always nice to hang out with all the friends from all over the world!! But is hard for us to be traveling all the time to compete. Brazil is far from the competitions and expensive to fly to Europe or the US for instance, and it’s hard to find someone that can help us with the costs of the travels. They only care about soccer. Beside this we love free sailing, free sailing was the first thing that put us into the sport, we love to have fun on the water among all of our friends, and we think that is the way to bring more people to the sport, to have fun!

João: Yeah, now I look to windsurfing as a sport to have fun not as a sport for work. I tried to be a professional windsurf for 3 years and I had good results, like a 5th on Lanzarote in 2010 without any sponsors! After this I saw the world of windsurfing doesn’t look to the sailors like they are professionals. It’s just about the top three. No one looks to the rest of the sailors. All competitions I’ve been, I had to put all my money on it, and every year I had to buy a new gear with my money!!! I never had support to compete. NEVER! I’m not rich to spend lot of money on this, but it’s a dream. That sport put me out! It’s hard to stop competing, knowing what you can do, but you don’t have more money to try more!

Continentseven: You all three have an incredible high windsurfing level. Are you talents like Kauli or Brawzinho and will you return to the international circuit?

Levi:  If we got chance to compete in the international circuit again, we would go for sure, but it’s not our goal at this moment. Also Brawzinho and Kauli are really good friends and they are the best sailors in the world! It pushes our level, too. It’s like to be friend of Kelly Slater or Sebastian Vettel, for sure if you hang out with these guys you would be surfing way better and doing laps faster.

João: If I find some support I’ll be back for sure!! But I’m tired to go to the brands and talk about just for equipment and hearing the same thing “our team is already big” or “we can’t do this” and bla bla bla… Looks like I’m asking for alms!!

Continentseven: The FIFA World Cup is in full swing in your home country.  Do you like football and what do you think about the event?

Levi:  Brazil is in a really bad situation right now, with all the corrupt politicians, they are taking advantage of the soccer world cup to steal a lot of money, and they make the people look like clowns. Most of the people in Brazil are poor and have no information of what is happening, but they start to feeling that is something wrong. This year we also will have the presidential election and we believe if Brazil wins the world cup nothing will change in the government, because people will be happy and politicians will advertise about how “proud” we are to be Brazilians, but if Brazil will lose, people will have something to complain about, and maybe we got a chance to change things around here! It is that stupid but this is how it works here. So I hope Brazil loses on the group round, if not it would be nice to lose against Argentina in the final! 

João: I really don’t care about the Football World Cup! I hope it all goes wrong. Brazil has a lot of things much more important to care about! We pay a lot of tax for having nothing from the public state, no security, no health, no education, no roads, nothing! Football in Brazil gets all the attention of the country. That’s wrong. We have a lot of talents on many sports and no one care about it! Just Football! I live in Fortaleza, so we gonna have a few games here! But I’m not excited, I prefer go to windsurf!

Continentseven: Do you dream to have a windsurfing World Cup in Brazil again?

Levi:  Yeah!! For sure!! We hope to have one as soon as possible here!!
João: Sure!! A big one, where all the athletes will be on the middle of the media showing their talent!

 ©continentseven.com 2014