Gabriel Medina declares “surfing wins” as Teahupoo Olympics ends

"Everyone's watching and paying attention..."

The corpse of surfing shortboard’s second Olympic running is still warm but that is not stopping the punditry from trying to put it in a broader context, figuring out what it all meant and what it will mean for this Sport of Queens. Stab went full jingoism in the immediate aftermath, noting that Caroline Marks’ gold pushed the United States momentarily past China in the medal counts. Weird per the norm. The Inertia focused on whale hunting off Japan’s coast. France’s RFI, or Radio France Internationale, kept up its proud secular tradition by lightly making fun of gold medalist Kauli Vaast crediting “life force” for his win and ESPN, the worldwide leader in sport, declared the whole affair a boon to surfing.

“While not every surfer who competed was able to bring home a medal,” wrote the unnamed author, “many agreed that the second Olympic surfing competition — filled with viral photographs, record-breaking scores and hours of stunning video footage broadcast to viewers around the world — helped promote the sport.”

The first was, of course, in the aforementioned whale huntin’ Japan in tiny conditions.

The piece continued:

“Everyone’s watching and paying attention,” said (Gabriel Medina), who said he gained millions of social media followers after a photo of him floating in the sky next to his surfboard while bailing out of a wave went viral during the competition. “I think surfing wins.”

But do you agree with the assessment? An overall win for surfing? I can’t speak to how things were playing in the United States or Australia, but in Paris it was impossible to find even the shortest clip of surfing shortboard on any national broadcast. I didn’t see one, in fact. So surfing maybe didn’t win in France but Hossegor grumpy locals should be well pleased. First the World Surf League up and leaves. Then the country refuses to care because handball.

Gold.