MUD in the MOMENT is SUNMUD's community series spotlighting the athletes, adventurers, and everyday humans doing cool shit in the outdoors, while wearing the mud. These are their moments.
Zoe Benedetto grew up with salt water in her veins. Born and raised in Palm City, Florida, she learned to surf from her mother and never looked back, making her competitive debut on the WSL Women's Junior Tour in 2016 and racking up multiple first-place finishes on the WSL Qualifying Series by 2018. Now she's taken her career in a direction most wouldn't expect: representing Italy on the international stage, training with the Azzurri Olympic team in Munich wave pools and on the Atlantic swells of Hossegor, France, with LA 2028 firmly in her sights.
We caught Zoe pre-Olympics, in the thick of her first Italian national team training camp, to talk wave pools, what it's like training alongside Leonardo Fioravanti, the reality of three surf sessions a day, and what she hopes to say when we sit back down with her on the other side of LA 2028.
This is her moment.
You just started Olympic training, first at an artificial wave pool in Munich, then heading to Hossegor in France. How does training for the Olympics feel different from training for a WSL event?
The truth is, the only difference between the two trainings is my mental state! Both events are important to me and require my time and extreme effort. I always want and try to put my best into every session, film review, and recovery session. However, I would say as I just had my first experience training with the Olympic team my main goal was to soak in as much knowledge and experience as I could. There’s so much to learn from the whole team. The coaches are some of the best, so any advice and criteria they give you to work on is something I really value and want to work on. My team mates also impacted my experience so much! Some people have been on the team a long time so hearing their experiences can help you adapt on the way and feel more comfortable in such a new environment! So overall yes, instead of only focusing on training and getting reps in like in a WSL event, I would say I was trying to emerge myself more into this first Olympic training!
The wave pool training environment is so different from open ocean surfing. How do you mentally prepare to perform on a wave you can technically predict, and does that make it harder or easier?
This is a great question! I honestly love surfing in the wave pool because of the predictably! Surfing in the pool feels so foreign since we are used to surfing in the ocean 24 seven but that's kind of the fun non-natural part. It quite literally feels like a pool party. The thing about surfing is it’s a whole process: the paddle out, finding the right spot where the waves are coming in, actually catching the wave and then surfing. When you’re in the pool, all you’re doing is surfing. There’s no finding the spots, there's no paddle out. It’s literally all the best parts. It doesn’t feel real. I feel like for training purposes working in a wave pool is very beneficial because you are getting so many reps with quality opportunities that you might not have all the time in the ocean. For training, most of the time you’re trying to work on a handful of things. Some are more of a priority than others so being able to get into the pool and having the perfect opportunity in front of you over and over and over again is honestly amazing. Repetition is how you acquire new skills in the wave pool is textbook repetition.
What does a training day look like right now, walk us through it from morning to water time to recovery?
At this moment I’m trying for a WSL event coming up in about a week. My days right now consist of waking up around 7am, having a light snack or breakfast before the first surf session of the day, light stretching before surfing, surfing for about 1 1/2 - 2 hours, lunch, either another surf or light workout, stretching and rest, then dinner. I know my body so well, quality rest and recovery is huge for me alongside good nutrition to fuel my body for the long days!
You're training alongside Leonardo Fioravanti, one of the top surfers in the world. What's it like being in that environment and what are you learning from it?
Leo is an amazing athlete and person. I’m grateful to be able to train alongside him! There’s so much to learn from an athlete like him. Seeing how much effort he puts into every day from applying details to his surfing to seeing how seriously he takes his recovery is very eye opening. His mental state and seeing how he interacts with his team is also something to be noted. Always kind and respectful. Making people feel important. All of these little things add up. It's very interesting to see how much goes into it! It’s like watching someone apply oil to a machine. I’m just trying to be a sponge and take everything I can from being surrounded by amazing people.
There is a moment in training or competition when everything gets hard and you have to decide whether you push through. What's yours?
This last training we just had there were so many positives in the experience. I would say the only tough moments I had were from fatigue. At the wave pool in Munich we were surfing three times a day. Each session was 1 hour. First session 9am to 10am, then 3pm to 4pm, and finally 10pm to 11pm. Surfing that much in a day is pretty physically demanding and realistically we weren’t getting in bed till 12am. Then there’s trying to calm your body down after the adrenaline rush, which is just another layer on top of it, so that’s the only challenging part I would say.
You're being interviewed pre-Olympics, and we'll talk again after. What do you want to be able to say in that second conversation that you can't say yet?
I would love to be able to say that I have officially competed and have an Olympic ring. It would be the biggest honor. I also would love to hear from my future self about what the experience was like. Are you proud, did you feel ready, do you want to do it again, and how has your life changed!?
You're about to spend months training in open ocean conditions in Europe and eventually competing in California sun. What does sun protection look like in your daily routine and what does having a product that actually performs in the water mean to you?
Sun protection is a huge part of my daily routine, especially because I’m constantly in and out of the water. I always make sure I have SUNMUD sunscreen with me because I need something I can actually trust when I’m surfing, not just something that works when I’m on land. Between long surf sessions, being outside all day, and traveling for waves, protecting my skin is something I’ve learned I can’t skip. Using an all natural ingredient sunscreen has really made a difference.
We wish you the best of luck Zoe! To follow her surf and Olympic journey, you can follow her on Instagram. If you are feeling inspired? Shop Zoe's go-to. SUNMUD tinted sport stick, trusted in the ocean, built for athletes who can't afford to compromise.
