A photo of the athlete Gabriel Medina, who is participating in the surfing event of the Olympic Games held in Tahiti, went viral and immediately gathered no less than 2.4 million likes.
The photo from the Olympic Games that went viral, with the surfer Gabriel Medina. PHOTO Profimedia
“A photo of 10 for a wave of 10”, CNN journalists wrote about the image in which the surfer was caught just as he jumped off the surfboard, with one hand raised and his index finger outstretched as a sign of attention, while his board flew into parallel to it.
The third day of Olympic surfing competition appears to have been perfect in every way for Brazil’s Gabriel Medina, who qualified for the final thanks to a near-perfect wave of 9.90. It was the wave with the highest score in the history of Olympia.
The one who managed to capture the viral image is the photographer Jerome Brouillet from Agence France-Presse.
“The conditions were perfect, the waves were higher than we expected. So he (Medina) is behind the wave and I can’t see him and then he appears and I took four photos and one of them was this. It wasn’t hard to take the picture. It was more about anticipating the moment and where Gabriel would trigger the wave” Jerome Brouillet told The Guardian.
The photographer was helped by his knowledge and experience, he could anticipate that one of the best waves of the day was approaching and he knew that Medina often makes this figure at the end of the wave.
Images automatically sent from the camera to his editors, and the reaction came immediately. Jerome Brouillet admits he was “a little surprised” by her.
“I was checking my phone during the six-minute break after the shoot and I got a lot of notifications on social media and I thought something was going on with this photo and it was shared on ESPN and I thought, ‘Wow !””the photographer said.
After Gabriel Medina, in turn, shared the photo on his Instagram page, it gathered more than 2.4 million likes.
