"Did you guys forget this didn't happen during your event?"
It is Thanksgiving weekend, in America, a time to slow down and appreciate the little things like friends, family, resources and professional competitive surfing at the highest level. This year, we were gifted a John John Florence championship, Carissa Moore’s picture-of-grace retirement and Filipe Toledo getting scared out of his mind, again, at Teahupo’o whilst the world watched.
Yes, the 2024 Paris Games, surfing’s second Olympic run, featured exactly one day of important action, but many moments therein including, but not limited to, Gabriel Medina exiting a wave, pointing one finger into the air and becoming iconic.
The image was quickly shared around the world and identified as “one of the most defining photographs of the Summer” even though surfers were lightly frustrated by the continued elevation of fly-away airs.
The World Surf League, in any case, had nothing to do with any of but in another act of blatant co-optation, posted the snap on its own social media feed as if it alone was responsible.
You will certainly recall when the “global home of surfing” went and colonized the years between 1976 and 2015, taking ownership of all the surf history therein except for women’s surf history which it routinely discards as “unimportant.”
Back to Thanksgiving weekend, though, did you have a nice time with friends and family or was your feast corrupted by corporate lying?
I feel you.
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Waiting for Godot…and some stickers!
I’m more upset that Haleiwa is firing and all they give us is score updates. Travesty.
Gabe’s moment in time was created by his linkage to the WSL. Like it or not he would never have been there if surfing was as it was in times gone by. A general perception out there that it was a past time for bums and wastrels. Surfing is on track whoever takes the reigns and rides the wave to the immortality this game deserves.
On track to where?
A version of Hunger games in world wide pools in every city worldwide where surfers become the new gladiators for the entertainment of kings and queens and plebs of course. Interesting concepts are springing up regularly. Justice will be served. Sharks alive.
Fuck, somebody has been celebrating Thanksgiving long and hard
Medina should have won.
I’m gonna say something and it might not be a very popular opinion but I have to say it. That photos not even that cool.
💯
You must admit it though, some of the photoshopped memes of that photo are hilarious.
The one with the Donald’s head pasted on that Tudor posted was entertaining.
(Be surprised if the mere mention of those two doesn’t energize this thread. A couple of lightning rods, they are.)
Speaking of Donald, did you see the Thanksgiving video he posted? That’s some peak trollan, there.
https://youtu.be/JGjuxO4ti6U?si=mH2VzTo2rJdyg_Gg
The man’s masterful.
It’s honestly so par for the course at this point that the world gawks at this photo when the real jaw dropping image was taken a mere second before this.