The Olympics are pretty much tailor-made for epic moments. But it's hard to think of anything that quite competes with Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina's recent run at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
After his record-breaking performance at Teahupo’o in Tahiti, French Polynesia, where the Paris Olympics surfing events are being held, Medina emerged from a barreling wave to seemingly hover mid-air for a moment over the ocean.
That's nothing abnormal for surfing, of course.
But a photographer happened to be at the ready to click his shutter at precisely the right second, yielding an absolutely unforgettable photo of Medina seemingly standing on the clouds. It truly must be seen to be believed.
The photo was captured by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet at the precise moment Medina threw up a "#1" symbol with his hand to celebrate his record-breaking surf—he'd just scored a 9.90, the highest wave score in Olympics history.
So it's fitting, then, that the moment just before Medina fell back into the water was captured in what is perhaps the greatest moment of photographic perfect-timing ever.
It's so epic, in fact, that at first blush it seems like it simply HAS to be Photoshopped. But Brouillet told the press that it was simply a stroke of extraordinarily good luck.
Brouillet took the photo from a boat nearby, and extraordinary as it is, he said that it was really just all in a day's work.
“The conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected."
“So [Medina] is at the back of the wave and I can’t see him and then he pops up and I took four pictures and one of them was this one."
“It was not hard to take the picture. It was more about anticipating the moment and where Gabriel will kick off the wave.”
Brouillet may be circumspect about the photo, but the general public? Not so much.
People on social media could not believe how epic the photo of Medina was, and from an event known for its epic photos, no less.
And of course there were plenty of jokes as well.
There are surely scores of epic moments yet to come from the 2024 Paris Olympics, but it's not likely there will be a photo that rivals this one.
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