Medina responds to claims from Igarashi he's a cry-baby etc.

The two-time world champion Gabriel Medina, whose lunge for Olympic Gold was stymied by controversial judging decisions in both his semi-final and bronze-medal heats, has hit back at Olympic medallist Kanoa Igarashi after he appeared to mock the Brazilian in a tweet. 

In Portuguese, for Igarashi is fluent in Portuguese, a sort of American English as well as Japanese, he tweeted, “Chora chora q tou feliz! Hehehehe” followed by “Bla bla bla” and a laughing emoji. 

Translate, “Cry cry. I’m happy!” 

Bla bla bla, pretty explanatory. 

Medina, cry-baby etc.

The tweet went pretty mad, 877 retweets, 8,337 likes and 11.5k quote tweets.

As a blanket response to his Brazilian critics, Igarashi wrote, “I always have the utmost respect for other competitors, but I don’t have the patience for people who like to talk bad about something I don’t have control over. I did my best and that’s it.”

https://twitter.com/KanoaIgarashi/status/1420357003713531908

After landing back home in Brazil, Medina was quick to hit back at Igarashi. 

“Clowning around after you win is easy. Everyone respects each other on the circuit. I won countless times from him and never played. I prefer to work in silence, do mine and focus… I watched the waves. That’s why I held back my words, I wouldn’t speak without having watched. Comparing my best waves and his two best ones, I won the heat. I’m really sad…I don’t want to let it shake me. I received huge support from Brazil, and that only makes me stronger. Those sad days will pass and I will bring even more pride to us.”

Medina added he wanted to light up Tahiti at the 2024 Paris Games, the surfing part of the show being held at Teahupoo.

“I hope to be in the next Olympics in Tahiti, which is a wave I love. There is still a long time, three years, but my dream starts from now…”

"I’d definitely love to get in the water with a Great White…"

The captain of a charter boat doing the rounds of Western Australia’s gorgeous Montebello Islands will be investigated by Work Safe and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, as well as Fisheries, after witnesses say he provoked a ten-foot Lemon shark into biting hell out of him. 

Aaron Moir, who is thirty-two, was treated by one of the quests onboard  after getting hit on his back and leg by the shark, before being evacuated the thousand miles back to Perth 

Witnesses aboard the boat claim he provoked the shark by intentionally jumping on its back and are now seeking compensation for their foreshortened once-in-a-lifetime $5000 voyage. 

Moir was sacked from his previous charter boat gig in 2014 after surfing a fourteen-foot Hammerhead, telling reporters afterwards, “I was thinking, ‘Right, it’s hammer time’. Bang — I just jumped on. I tell you what though, their skin is as rough as sandpaper. I couldn’t wear undies for three days because it ripped my thighs to shreds. The guests all had a laugh. They call me the shark rider.”

The Hammerhead was unharmed and although Moir conceded he was “a bit of an idiot” he added, “It’s just a bit of fun. I’m here for a good time, not a long time… I’ve worked with sharks for a long time and I understand them and how they go. I’d definitely love to get in the water with a Great White if there was someone who knew what they were doing.”

"Rumors swirled before the pandemic that he was shopping the league around for a sale at a price of $150 million."

Forbes magazine wealth intern Isabelle “I write about billionaires” Bousquette has lifted the veil on surfing’s great cultural battlefield for American mainstream readers, casting Dirk Ziff’s WSL-led VALS in one corner and BeachGrit’s so–called grumpy locals in the other. 

In a very long piece, thousand-plus words, too long probs won’t read etc, Bousquette examines the money Ziff has poured into the WSL hole, “He invested $25 million into the league in 2012 and subsequently became the majority owner, pouring in at least $25 million more, according to a 2017 lawsuit filed by a former investor” and the role the Olympics might play in giving the League an opening into the fabled millions of middle-America fans sought but never caught. 

Ziff’s World Surf League has already seen a 25% increase in hours of online content watched by viewers of its first six events of 2021, compared with the first six events two years ago, according to Erik Logan, the league’s CEO. “People are excited about surfing because it’s in the Olympics,” Logan says.

There’s a bit of history about the takeover of the ASP, the aforementioned lawsuit which says former CEO Paul Speaker was sacked and bought out for twelve-million dollars and examines the failure of its plan to leverage the KS pool and “build-out of a global network of WSL-branded high-performance training centers utilizing this wave technology.”

BeachGrit swings in midway through. 

The reclusive billionaire has been a polarizing figure for many in the surfing community. Some have seen his quest for a mainstream audience as alienating to the core surf community. Specifically, one irreverent online publication known as BeachGrit has positioned itself as a nemesis to Ziff, writing headlines like: “If you were drowning, and co-waterperson of the year Dirk Ziff was in the water, would you feel confident?”

Also cameo-ing is Sean Doherty, the owner of Surfing World magazine who says the WSL is running a fool’s errand.

Yet it remains to be seen whether surfing can ever enter the mainstream. Sean Doherty, who’s covered the industry since 1997 for various publications and now owns Surfing World Magazine, isn’t optimistic. “[Surf brands] have always believed that there’s a huge mainstream audience, particularly in America, who don’t surf but, if surfing was presented the right way, would engage with it,” he says. “The previous incarnation of the sport learned that this was always fool’s gold and it’s never really existed.”

And will Ziff keep pouring his cash into the WSL hole?

It took 12 years after its Olympic debut for snowboarding to find a Shaun White, and it’s unclear how long Ziff will continue backing the WSL. Rumors swirled before the pandemic that he was shopping the league around for a sale at a price of $150 million. The WSL declined to comment on these rumors.