Breaking Records.. History Rewritten.. Toledo, Igarashi take top honors on the Championship Tour and ISA World Surfing Games with Dark Arts under their feet!
September, 2022: Filipe Toledo and Kanoa Igarashi scored huge wins on the world surfing stage and Dark Arts was right there with them! Toledo clinched his first WSL championship on a Dark Arts board, becoming the first surfer ever to win the tour on a non PU board. Just one week later, Igarashi took top honors at the ISA World Surfing Games, making him the first to qualify for the 2024 Olympics. He was also riding Dark Arts technology!
Toledo, known as one of the fastest surfers on tour, put his Dark Arts x Sharp Eye Inferno FT board masterfully to work at Lower Trestles in the WSL finals to beat out Igarashi, Jack Robinson, Ethan Ewing, and Italo Ferreira for the biggest win in the surfing world.
He has been on the tour since 2015, finishing near the top of the pack on several occasions but, until now, never clinching the crown. With this win he becomes the first surfer ever to win the championship on a carbon fiber board.
During the final heat, Kelly Slater commented on his board, saying, “He’s riding those… vacuum bagged, carbon wrapped boards, and they have a lot of life to them… the push right back in your feet, you feel that energy off the wave.”
Toledo was riding a quad fin set up on a swallow tail board shaped especially for him by Marcio Zouvi. Zouvi and Dark Arts founder Justin Ternes have been personal friends for twenty years, and have been working together professionally for the past five.
The surfboard Filipe Toledo had for this finals win is a slightly modified version of the Inferno 72, (known as the Inferno FT) with his signature Filipe Toledo FT fin. Read more about it on Stab Premium.
Toledo proved the carbon boards hold up incredibly in less than ideal waves, surfing with elegance and precision despite extremely windy conditions.
One week later, Japan’s Kanoa Igarashi took the win at the ISA World Surfing Games with the same dream team collaboration, Dark Arts x Sharp Eye.
Chris Cote, commentating on the event, noted how the carbon wrapped board gave him “a slight advantage over his competition,” saying it gave him extra pop, and calling it “basically F1 racing technology put on to a surf board.”
Dark Arts is thrilled and honored to collaborate with such talented and dedicated surfers and shapers. We have believed in the potential of our boards since the start, but these big wins have proven what we always hoped to be true - that they are capable of delivering the best performances at the highest level.
To everyone who was a part of this historic season, we want to say a big thank you, and we look forward to seeing how Dark Arts and carbon technology will move surfing forward and take the sport to new heights in the coming years.