On Monday, July 29, Gabriel Medina distinguished himself in Teahupo’o, Tahiti, in the 3rd round/heat 5 of the surfing event of the 2024 Olympic Games. The Brazilian, a star of his discipline, made a strong impression. And Jérôme Brouillet, an AFP photographer, took an exceptional photo of the surfer. He recounts this moment of grace that he immortalized with his camera.
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He knew he was in for an explosion when he saw Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina hit one of the biggest waves of the day at the JO 2024in 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, Gabriel Medina can be seen in a three-quarter front view rising above the waves, pointing his index finger towards the sky, with his surfboard vertically behind him. 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, the Agence France Presse (AFP) photographer is on a boat in the channel, a deeper, calmer area of water on the side of the wave, with no clear view of the action. I am blind ” at that moment, he explains. But it was exactly the place to be.
The “greatest sports photo of all time”?
Jérôme Brouillet was in a privileged position to wait for Medina to “kick out”, that is to say, to come out of the face of the wave at the end of his race. Sometimes he does an acrobatic gesture and this time he did and I pressed the shutter ” says the photographer. The shot is so spectacular that online commentators 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 thinking, ‘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 5,000 pictures, and I don’t like that! ” He adds : ” I was also on the lookout for the next wave. I took 20-25 photos on both waves. »
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 Australian media conglomerate News.com.au on its 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 on his own Instagram account, quickly attracting more than 2.4 million likes.
Despite the praise, Brouillet said the celebrations would have to wait, as he still had the rest of the competition to photograph.
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