Matilde Quattrini, a rider on our team, is the 2026 Italian surfskate champion: on Sunday, July 19, she won the Open Women's title at the FISR Italian Surfskate Championship at Tortuga in Capalbio, and for the fourth year running the title didn't change hands. Two days of heats on the wood wave, about forty riders from all over Italy, and Tortuga's wood baking under the Maremma sun. Under her feet, on every run, a board you won't find on our site yet: the Mati Pro, her pro model by Balance Board Pro. This contest was its toughest test yet.
In Short
The 2026 Italian Surfskate Championship (FISR) ran July 18–19 at Tortuga Surf School in Capalbio, on a wood wave. Matilde Quattrini, fifteen years old, won her fourth consecutive Italian Open Women's title, ahead of Marta Leporati and Sophia Del Vecchio. She competed on the Mati Pro, her handmade Balance Board Pro surfskate: it isn't for sale yet, and it's coming soon to our shop.
How the 2026 Italian Surfskate Championship Played Out at Tortuga in Capalbio
Four categories, roughly forty athletes, two days of judged runs on the wood wave. Here's the breakdown, from the official results on Surfskate Italy:
- Open Women: 1st Matilde Quattrini, 2nd Marta Leporati, 3rd Sophia Del Vecchio
- Open Men: 1st Edoardo Manzo, 2nd Lorenzo Perone, 3rd Samuel Servadei
- Junior Women: 1st Bianca Giannotti, 2nd Mia Berretti, 3rd Zaira Franci
- Junior Men: 1st Tommaso Cecconi, 2nd Leonardo Russo, 3rd Leonardo Mancini
The Best Rookie award went to Samuele Leonessi and Bianca Giannotti. The event runs under the Italian Federation of Roller Sports (FISR): Italian surfskate now has a federation, a circuit, and a national title that actually carries weight.
And the fact that this all happens on a wood wave, not in some random skatepark, says a lot about where the discipline is headed.
Matilde Quattrini: The Champion Who Test-Rides Our Boards
Matilde isn't a brand ambassador. She's the rider who puts our boards to the test before you ever ride one.
Italian Open champion — the top category on the FISR (Italian Federation of Roller Sports) circuit — four years running: she defended her title again this year.
She's ridden our boards for about two years, ever since she won one at a contest during the Soul Hands Festival. It was love at first ride: since that day, she's ditched her old surfskate and rides only Balance Board Pro, including the new models we test together with her.
Why did she pick our board? In her words:
"It was pure feeling. I clicked with it right away because of the airs and the lightness: Balance Board Pro surfskates just pop higher."
— Matilde Quattrini, multiple-time Italian Open champion
Matilde Quattrini in Action: The Title-Winning Run
The video at the top of this article shows a few seconds of the Mati Pro on Tortuga's wood wave: watch how Matilde builds speed without ever putting a foot down. Every burst of speed you see is pump, not push.
Born in 2011, now fifteen, Matilde stepped on a surfskate for the first time in September 2021, on the track at the EUR adventure park in Rome, under the Fungo, the district's mushroom-shaped water tower. Two years later, she was already Italian champion. Tortuga marks her fourth consecutive title: nobody has taken it from her since 2023. And since late 2024, she's been splitting her training between the board and basketball — more sports, more movement vocabulary, more balance.
What separates a title-winning run from the rest? It's not the flashiest trick. It's clean execution: entering a transition with your weight already set, pumping at exactly the right moment, exiting every turn faster than you entered it. It's the same principle we teach anyone using a surfskate to train for surfing: control first, style second. Style shows up on its own.
Edoardo Manzo in Action: The Open Champion's Run
A few seconds on Tortuga's wood wave for Edoardo Manzo too, the 2026 Italian Open champion: watch Edoardo surf this wood wave with lines that echo real surfing, filtered through a clean, personal style that's a pleasure to watch.
Video above: Edoardo Manzo on Tortuga's wood wave, in Capalbio.
What Is a Surfskate, and Why Is the Italian Scene Growing?
A surfskate is a skateboard with a pivoting front truck: it rotates on a pivot, letting you turn tight and load your turns the way you would on a wave. The result: you're not pushing off the ground with your foot. You're generating speed by pumping, compressing and extending your legs as you link one turn into the next.
💡 Skateboard = street and tricks. Surfskate = flow and surf feel.
That's exactly what makes it a training tool, not just a fun ride: surfskate pumping uses the same muscle chains and the same timing as going rail to rail on a wave. If you want to start from the basics — trucks, sizing, first drills — check out our complete surfskate guide.
Meanwhile, the movement has matured: schools across Italy, active communities, wood waves popping up from north to south, and a federal FISR championship with junior categories packed with riders. Forty athletes in competition isn't a gathering of friends: it's a scene.
The Wood Wave: Where Surfskate Becomes a Competition
A wood wave is a structure made of wood or other materials (laminate, fiberglass) that replicates the profile of an ocean wave: a continuous ramp with smooth transitions, designed to be ridden in a line, recreating surfers' movements and lines on dry land. Tortuga in Capalbio hosts one of the best-known wood waves in Italy.
Why is it the perfect format for a surfskate competition? Because it strips away everything but the essentials. On wood, you can't push: either you pump with the right timing, or you stop. Every transition demands that you load your quads in compression and release in extension at the exact point where the ramp gives speed back. Miss the timing by half a second, and the run dies right there.
Image above: the Soul Hands Festival at Bela Burdela beach from a drone view: the Balance Board Pro booth, the free riding track, and the surfskate wave just steps from the sea.
Italy is also home to a famous fiberglass surfskate wave, the first ever installed on an Italian beach, at Bela Burdela in Torre Pedrera, Rimini. Built by Whitezu Surfskate Wave, it's designed to optimize technical and functional training for surfers on a surfskate.
For anyone training with surfing in mind, it's the most honest proving ground there is.
💡 A wood wave gives you the same feedback as a real wave: get the line right and you accelerate, get it wrong and you feel it in your legs immediately.
Train Your Pump Like Matilde: 3 Exercises to Get Started
You don't need a wood wave to work on your timing. You need a smooth patch of asphalt, a surfskate, and the patience to repeat. Three steps, in order:
1. Start From a Standstill, Zero Pushes
Stand on the board on flat ground and try to get it moving using only shoulder and hip rotation plus leg loading. At first you'll only move a foot or two, then the motion cleans up. If you're pushing with your foot, start over: the goal is to understand where your speed actually comes from.
2. Tight Slalom Through Markers
Set three or four markers on the ground — two water bottles will do — a couple of yards apart, and link them together with turns. Load every turn in compression and extend on the way out: if you come out of a turn slower than you went in, you're just turning, not pumping.
3. Find a Slight Uphill Grade
This is the most honest test if you don't have a ramp: pumping on a slight incline forces correct timing, because any mistake stops you cold. Thirty clean seconds going uphill are worth more than ten minutes of turns on flat ground.
If you find a concrete wave at a skatepark, bring the slalom from step 2 there. Start with your back or your chest to this "wave" and try to go up and down without losing speed, in one continuous motion: that's the flow of surfing.
🏄♂️ Coach's Tip
Burning legs: that's normal, that's the load working. Sore knees or back: stop and check your position — weight centered, back straight, knees soft, eyes forward instead of down at your feet.
Mati Pro: Matilde's Pro Model, Coming Soon
The board Matilde won on is the Mati Pro, her surfskate pro model: it grew out of direct collaboration between her and our workshop, and it was developed the way all our boards are — by hand, in Italy, tested by someone who pushes it to the limit in competition.
Image above: the Mati Pro, Matilde Quattrini's surfskate pro model — handmade in Italy.
It's not live yet: we're preparing it for launch on our shop, and this Italian title is its best possible introduction. When it drops, you'll find it here on the blog before anywhere else.
💡 Handcrafted Balance Board Pro surfskates — made by hand in Italy, competition-tested by our riders. 👉 Explore the surfskate collection
Your Turn
A surfskate doesn't ask you to wait for the ocean: it asks for a line, some asphalt, and the right timing. Want to feel for yourself what a well-loaded turn gives back?
👉 Explore Balance Board Pro surfskates — handmade in Italy, raced by Matilde Quattrini, the reigning Italian champion.