Gabriel Medina Makes waves.
And it’s not just because of the Brazilian surfer’s record-breaking performance at the 2024 Olympics.
If you’ve been following the Games, you know that Medina was very pleased with his performance during the third round of the men’s surfing competition on July 29 in Teahupo’o, a village on the French Polynesian island of Tahiti where surfers compete while the rest of the athletes face off in Paris.
In fact, he was so confident in his riding that he predicted his score by holding up 10 fingers as he exited a massive barrel wave — and he wasn’t far off the mark. The 30-year-old earned a 9.90, which, according to NBC News, is the highest single-wave score in Olympic sporting history (with surfing making its debut at the Tokyo 2020 Games).
But that wasn’t the only part of Medina’s wave that caused a stir. After exiting the barrel and heading towards the edge of the wave, the athlete rose from his board and appeared to signal the number 1 by pointing his finger towards the sky, a moment captured in mid-air in a now-viral photo by Jerome Brouillette.