Gabriel Medina calls for revolution in surf judging, “I don’t want to argue with their score, I want to understand it deeply”

“Put a camera in there and broadcast it…”

The one-time black knight of surfing, famous for his rain squalls of tears and thunderclap tantrums, the finger jabbing and those pretty black eyes wild and obsessed, Gabriel Medina, has made a revealing statement on Instagram regarding the state of WSL judging.

Thirty-one-year-old three-time world champ Medina reposted a reel from the WSL’s former director of social media, Felipe Marcondes, where Marcondes points out the organisation has a transparency prob when it comes to the manner in which judges arrive at scores.

“There’s one thing that I wish changed overall in surfing is like transparency on judging,” says Marcondes who runs with the handle Curious Felipe and in this instance is interviewing BeachGrit’s own Toxically Positive Chris Cote.

“Because, you know, I’ve got into this before, heated arguments and all that stuff, but it doesn’t matter what the judge says, you have to trust that they know what they’re doing.

“Obviously they know way more than 99% of us and my thing is I don’t want to argue with their score, I just want to understand it deeply. A simple thing would be to put a camera in there. Mic them up cause then you’re gonna start learning more where the head was and then you’re gonna learn what counts more, what the variables are. I just wish there was a segment that would be in the middle of the broadcast – let’s just jump to the judges to see what they’re talking about.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Felipe Marcondes (@feelipe)

It’s a real good point, idea, and would be a vast improvement on commentators still peddling the lie that a light whisking on a closeout end section will transform a six into an eight or stumbling on that same end section will reduce a nine to a seven.

Gabriel Medina was the most high profile of commenters below the line, adding his weight to the post with a simple, “I agree.”

Medina, of course, has never been a real pal of the judges. Last year at Bells, and after losing to eventual winner Cole Houshmand, he told big-wave maven Laura Enenver.

“Ah, this is funny…this is the worst judging I’ve ever seen. 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.”

Gabriel Medina’s outburst followed a long proud line of Brazilians complaining about losing, notably in El Salvador and at Surf Ranch.

Watch the whole interview here and let’s see if we can’t crank the viewer count a little beyond 53.