After a modest Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, surfing has found everything it wanted in Paris 2024. It has had to travel more than 15,000 kilometres from the French capital to make its mark, but before the fight for medals has even begun, it has already left one of the photos of these Olympic Games. Gabriel Medina (30 years old, São Sebastião; Brazil), a reference in the discipline, flies over the Pacific Ocean and points to the sky after riding the best wave in the brief Olympic history of the discipline, rated 9.9 out of 10. His board, his link with the water, floats in the air next to him in a divine-looking image that also credits Jerome Brouillet, photographer for the French agency AFP.
Within hours, the image has gone around the world, which is exactly what the organisers wanted when they chose the remote and exotic Tahiti in French Polynesia as the venue. This is the most remote venue in the Olympics, and perhaps one of the most extreme and special of all time. The dangerous nature of the Tehaupo’o wave, known in English as “wall of skulls”, has left several athletes bloodied due to impacts with the reef. There was even a comical moment when German Tim Elter lost his swimming trunks due to the power of the wave after a fall and showed his backside to everyone.
🦸♂️ 𝗘 !
Gabriel Medina flew au-dessus des vagues to Tahiti!
Following the Games of #Paris2024 intégralité sur Eurosport via Max pic.twitter.com/9B0lafrNV7
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At this break, the ocean seems to swallow up the island and it goes from several kilometres deep to half a metre in the blink of an eye, the same time that the protagonists have to jump into the void and ride this mythical wave. “I felt like it was a 10 wave. I’ve already done a few and I thought, ‘it must be’. The wave was perfect. It was very dangerous out there. When the waves are hollow, the water is very shallow. They are very solid waves, but we love this,” commented the star of the day, who advanced to the quarter-finals with the manoeuvre.
“I think when he was in the tube he knew it was going to be one of the waves of the day, so he was like, ‘guys, this is a 10,’” Broulliet said. The wave was a 10, and so was the photo. “I had four images of him out of the water, and one of them was this one,” he said in statements provided by his own agency. “We are all waiting for this moment, especially in Tehaupo’o we know that Medina will do something when he comes out of the wave. He usually does these acrobatic gestures. But where will he come out? That is the critical moment, because you are blind,” he added. The photographer, who moved to Tahiti from Marseille a decade ago after falling in love with it during a vacation, had been preparing for this moment for several years and working with AFP to be present in the right place at the right time.
The Brazilian athlete, one of the most media-friendly surfers – he can be seen alongside Neymar Jr., Jimmy Butler and other celebrity friends – and three-time champion of the World Surf League circuit, the most important competition in the discipline, had already won events on this same stage in the past. Now he is looking to succeed his compatriot Italo Ferreira, the first Olympic gold medalist in Japan, on the top of the podium, although the competition is very high.
Medina’s tube in crystal-clear waters made the channel next to the break explode with joy, packed with boats and launches with the best surfers on the planet witnessing the spectacle first hand. With just one image, the brown, polluted and unpredictable waters of Tokyo, which did not please the competitors or anyone else, are already far behind. This is how beautiful and entertaining it can be as a sport and spectacle, even more so with an iconic postcard like Tehaupo’o in the background. After the photo that has gone around the world, the wind picked up in the break and forced the rest of the program to be postponed until further notice. When the competition resumes, the third round in the women’s category will be finished, where the Spanish Nadia Erostarbe will try to advance to the quarterfinals and secure the Olympic diploma.
In the second round, the other two national representatives, Janire González-Etxabarri and Andy Criere, were eliminated after not feeling entirely comfortable with the changing conditions of a highly physical and technical wave. This Tuesday afternoon, from 18.15 Spanish time, it will be known whether the championship will resume today or whether it will be decided to wait another day so that the weather will be better suited to the show.
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