On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true.

The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard.

  • ChaoticNeutralCzech
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    5 months ago

    The article says very much nothing that the title doesn’t. A video of the event showing how the surfer Gabriel Medina happened to strike a pose like this would be more helpful, but I suppose they don’t have the expensive rights to show Olympics footage. None of the YouTube channels covering this story seem to have them, either.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech
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        5 months ago

        For everyone else (encodeless rip from that video):

    • mercano@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It’d be region locked to hell. The International Olympic Committee sells the TV rights for each country at an exorbitant price, so the broadcasters feel the need to zealously defend their investments.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech
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        5 months ago

        You are right, my YouTube search results don’t show videos unavailable in the Czech Republic. I can watch one with a US VPN connection.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech
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        5 months ago

        Which countries does the video work in? Brazil, I assume, but the VPN plan I use does not have it available.

        • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          Yeah Brazil, fuck I don’t know why they make videos private for another country.

          • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
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            5 months ago

            That was awesome to watch! Thanks for the link and country (had the same VPN issues).

          • ChaoticNeutralCzech
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            5 months ago

            TV rights finance most of the Olympics so you can imagine they are well-guarded. Even archival footage from decades ago is expensive to licence. So I didn’t ☠️