"I always felt like the Brazilians had been robbed."
There is neither a dam nor sea deep enough to contain the tears of Brazilian surf fans after a decision goes against their favoured sons Gabriel Medina, Italo Ferreira and Filipe Toledo.
The Brazilian surf fan is the wretched poor crying at the gate, tormented by his losses, shivering with fury, gallons of salty sad.
The complaints are too many to list, of course, although surf fans will remember the death threats thrown at Griffin Colapinto for beating Filipe Toledo in El Salvador and the solemn promise to kill Ethan Ewing after easily despatching Gabriel Medina at Surf Ranch.
And, reluctant to stem the fury, Medina, Ferreira and Toledo are quick to fan the flames even higher, pointed comments on the WSL’s Instagram posts, letters to the judges published on Instagram etc.
Houshmand needed a sixish and gave hell to the running little Winkipop rights, got the score and then some.
In his post-heat interview Gabriel Medina wept,
“Ah, this is funny…this is the worst judging I’ve ever seen,” he told big-wave maven Laura Enever. “It’s bad for the sport, I’ve been through a lot of judging things but I feel like this is the worst one.… we pretend it’s not happening. It’s happening. It’s bad for the sport.
“The last wave was pretty small, I didn’t even paddle… this is sad. yeah, so much… (long sigh) I just feel bad. It sucks.”
Is there really an anti-Brazilian bias in pro surfing?
Filipe Toledo’s two world titles, which were gifted in two-foot waves tailor-made for the notoriously big-wave shy father of two, and Brazilians winning every world title since 2018 would suggest otherwise.
But now!
In a bombshell interview on Brazilian legend Rico De Souza’s channel with the world champion Australian surfer Barton Lynch, the claims are indeed true!
Gabriel Medina…is…persecuted!
“Over the years, I worked as a commentator and I was watching the heats and this (strange things) happened to Gabriel Medina a few times where I said. ‘What?’ said the universally respected BL. “I saw things differently and I always felt like the Brazilians had been robbed and I verbalized what I felt, I said what I thought”.
Also feeding into the conspiracy is the Brazilian-born two-time longboarding champ Phil Rajzman, whom you may’ve seen doin’ chop-hops on his log.
Writing on the WSL’s Instagram page,
The WSL is now executing what has already been done with longboard surfing, a category with less promotion and therefore easier to manipulate… In our case, they began by changing the traditional criteria (defined by the sport’s creators), which valued classic surfing and the sport’s evolution, in favor of “traditional Californian” surfing, which limits the sport to the equipment, maneuvers, and wave conditions surfed in California in the 60s/70s. In this way, they took a big step back in the category’s evolution and automatically eliminated several athletes who do not follow this culture, either due to the type of waves where they were born or because they do not agree with the limitations in the sport.
Next, they took advantage of the pandemic to hold a two-stage circuit in California (Kelly’s pool + Malibu), where athletes needed official letters from the organization to enter the country during the pandemic. However, they did not send me my letter, despite persistent requests more than three months in advance, and I ended up missing out on the circuit that year… After the organization’s “error” was publicly proven, they gave me a wild card the following year, but they did what they did with Medina to remove me from the circuit once again…
I managed to get 2 x 4.7 in the same heat, needing 4.8 😂 In 2023, we did not have a single Brazilian representative on the longboard circuit, while out of the top 16, 10 were Americans… Do you know why? The “California Surf League” closed sponsorship deals with the giant Californian footwear industry of the 60s/70s, which sells this retro Californian longboard lifestyle to the world… From then on, judgments in longboard surfing ended and the results began to align with the commercial interests of the sponsors…
Heady days, yes?
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“Universally respected Barton Lynch” hahahaha yeah nah. Dude was a pyramid scheme shill going back nearly 20 years before he became Robinson Crusoe flat earth lord.
Any publicity is good publicity hey Barton?
I gotta say, I kinda dig Barton’s look these days
Are you britt merrick?
🤣
did I see Robbo punching the fk out of his board after his heat or not? just a quick shot..?
Leo
Looked at rankings yesterday and apparently Kelly has a year long wildcard???
True?
Life long if youre a former world champ.
That’s it – give him a fucking life long one – he can just piss off let others come thru as of now, and decide if its pumping at chopes, pipe, cloudie wherever just rock up!!
Can be suitably amazed if he does well, if he goes shit just say well he did great for a 60 yr old!!
Gabriel surfed great, clean fast, snappy and stylish. Cole surfed with more power and rail commitment especially on the last wave. Gabriel fell on waves, his air wasn’t clean he basically fell but barely hung on, gave away the winning wave. Cole won fair and square but. No surprise Gabriel sees it differently. Close heat for sure but that last wave was undeniable. In my opinion.
That’s a fair summary , but I still wanna see him stick the knifey into the wsl
Let’s talk about this poo poo touch twilight zone episode we are currently in. If gaby and Kelly bomb out at Margie’s both will likely be eliminated by the mid year cut. It’s time for Kelly but…. That’s 14 world titles between the two. Then I bet they give Gaby one of those Kelly style wildcards to offset the fuckery for the next year. Wild how the poo festers
Shit waves = shit outcomes. The most interesting part of this entire contest was raglansurfreport’s bit on (not) watching the comp from the carpark.
Nothing speaks louder about corruption and surfing than Carroll ,Fannings & Gilmore’s track records.
Ps took you long enough to drop BLs name into Bells but I new it was coming.
Do elaborate about corruption and those track records?
When the supposedly stoked bloke fell down the rabbit hole of conspiracy fuckery he lost the mantle of being universally respected and of having much relevant to add to anything.
Was always a grifter, I wonder who he is fleecing over in Hawaii to keep him there…
Honestly, they’re like what you call ” One hit wonders ” If they were just judging by the airs they do then yes. But there’s more to riding a wave than just pumping enough speed for one air. Yeah I said it. Personally I like to see the wave ridden with many, many maneuvers.
That goes double now that top pros, Medina included for sure, integrate airs with the flow of the whole ride, just like a cutback or floater.
While airs will always be a way to milk a good score out of a closeout, the standard has been raised — largely by the Brazilian contingent themselves.
Robotic, repetitive backside turns. Big Housh makes big spray with big lumbering snaps. Gabriel’s snaps are sharper.
They all look the same in small surf.
Ironically, the one surfer who would have offered a point of difference (and won the contest) is the one we like to mock – Toledo.
Caroline Marks is really good at boring backside vertical snaps. Caroline became champ for doing her same robotic routine last year at Trestles. Caroline will win Bells the same way.
We mock Trestles but Bells is similar, even worse when small.
Who’s fun to watch? Gabriel and yes, Toledo. Carissa and Caity.
Bells is a way better wave than trestles.Trestles is a good wave for California but on a world scale its way down there.
Bells is only good when it gets to 6 foot, on a world scale its also way down there
Definitely, not even the 10th best wave in Victoria but trestles is worse again , by far
yup.
can’t we all just accept that like models, at one stage the younger versions are just so much more enticing and thats why we kill off the old, has worked perfectly for millennia until covid forced us to look after the old, maybe MEDINAGATE is where we turn the page, bye gabby , jordy, kelly, who can we get to replace Joe, surely there is a kid from trestles who can talk
The problem for Gabs, like many of those at the top of their craft, is he has long been judged against himself. Cole may have gotten the score but the damage was done on Gab’s earlier waves where he was clearly underscored.
Professional Surfing is a fucked sport that preys on our national pride and love for fighting with each other. It doesn’t make sense because they want Big dollars not cents, and nothing will change. Cry is Free!…
Barton is the biggest kook to ever win a title
Well there was nat young i suppose.
Old Nat definitely a benefactor of the Fix.
PT is worse, Barton lucked into his title from others failing, he is the Steven Bradbury of world champs
I challange that , have a look at how Nick Carroll won his Oz open title.
That was bullshit even then. None of the pros were allowed to compete for starters.
Nobody cares about Nick Carroll. Having said that nobody really cares about Barton either so carry on…
I shall
Wah,wah,wah🤣🤣🤣
controversies aside, in the first day of the comp, when Bells was bigger and somewhat proper, Medina made Cole look like a 2-year old. Overscore the California all you want, we know who the boss really is.
Medina is right but he’s also wrong. True it was overscored (as were a few other surfers in this comp) but he couldn’t have known it was overscored from his vantage point. He was behind the wave and there are no screens at Winki to watch it on.
So what he was really sooking about was that a guy he did not rate caught a small wave and beat him. Should have iced it with priority. That’s on him.
I mean sure it sucks to have a mic shoved under your nose after losing but have a bit of fucking class man. What he should have said was “Damn, that was a much smaller wave, no way did I think he could get that score”.
Everyone assumes he was stewing about the last wave of Houshmand’s being overscored. Maybe Medina felt he was being underscored the entire heat and inevitably he should of won regardless.
He would have won if only he’d taken that wave though. I doubt he deliberately lost to spite the judges.
The thing is he didn’t even turn to watch Cole’s last wave. He had no idea what Cole did other than getting completely showered by his turns.
Gabby has been the beneficiary of backside snaps being overscored for most of his career, and now he’s mad that it ultimately came back to haunt him. In essence a…
Haunted Housh
After just freshly reviewing on the Heat Anal-izer…It’s clear to me that the judges favor spray-throwing turns over ridiculously technical rotators when it comes to back hand scoring. The end.
Judges go through fads, it’s so bloody obvious. Matt Wilko almost won a word title on the back of huge backhand re-entries, which was his signature move, then half way through the season they got bored of it and he slipped back down the totem pole.
Bingo
Jadson Andre won a lot of heats with his air reverse until the judges stopped scoring it high even though it took ages for a lot of pros to emulate him.
Won snapper & bells on the trot!
Agreed, I just looked at rewinds of Cole’s waves and watched his body positioning and not the spray.
Pretty basic surfing but if someone weighs 220 pounds a lot of water in the air.