The AFP photographer Jerome Brouillet knew he was in for an explosion when he saw the Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina to ride one of the biggest waves of the day at the Olympic Games, at Teahupo’o, on one of the most powerful surf spots in the world.
Jérôme Brouillet captured one of the most striking images of these first days of the Games. In his photo, we can see Gabriel Medina in a three-quarter face view rising above the waves, pointing his index finger towards the sky, with his surfboard vertically behind his back.
Medina is known for his explosive aerial maneuvers, regularly sending himself and his board across the surface of the wave and into the air at breakneck speeds.
“Every photographer is waiting for this moment. You know that Gabriel Medina, especially at Teahupo’o, is going to step up and do something (…) The only tricky part is where he’s going to kick“, says Jérôme Brouillet.
As the surfer enters the wave, he is on a boat in the channel, a deeper, calmer area of water to the side of the wave, with no clear view of the action.I am blind“At that time,” he explains. “But it was exactly the place to be.
He was in a privileged position to wait for Medina to “kick out“, comes out of the face of the wave at the end of its course.”Sometimes he does an acrobatic gesture and this time he did and I pressed the shutter.“
The shot is so dramatic that online commenters wrongly assumed it had been Photoshopped.
“I think when he was in the tube, he knew he was in one of the biggest waves of the day. He jumped out of the water and thought, man, I think that’s a ten.“, said Jérôme Brouillet about Gabriel Medina.
Where the AFP photographer was lucky was that he only took four photos of the Brazilian surfer.When I take pictures at Teahupo’o, I don’t take burst mode pictures, because at the end of the day, if you press the button too hard, you come back with 5000 pictures, and I don’t like that!” he says.
“I was also on the lookout for the next wave. I took 20-25 photos on both waves” he adds. The image has been used by dozens of publications around the world and shared or liked millions of times online.
“This might just be the greatest sports photo of all time!” posted the Australian media conglomerate News.com.au on his Facebook page.
The magazine TIME described it as “the defining image of the triumph of the 2024 Summer Games.“
Gabriel Medina even posted the image to his own Instagram account, quickly attracting over 2.4 million likes.likes“.
Despite the praise, Brouillet said the celebrations would have to wait, as he still had the rest of the competition to photograph.
