GABRIEL MEDINA’S J-BAY MASTERCLASS

The mind boggled. It just didn’t seem possible. Gabriel Medina’s 9.73 to take command of this year’s final at the Corona Open J-Bay was one of the most improbable waves ever surfed in a world tour event; up there with CJ Hobgood’s Tahitian tube ride to another dimension in 2015, and Filipe Toledo’s double alley-oop also at J-Bay. When understood in the context of the history of Medina’s backside surfing, it takes on another dimension.

Bigger than anything that had come through all contest, the wave barely clung to the reef and had a bizarre triangular wedge running through it. Most world tour surfers would barely have managed a four