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Owen Wright survives and takes bronze

Italo Ferreira has won the Olympic premiere of surfing with superiority. In the final, the 27-year-old Brazilian defeated the Japanese local hero Kanoa Igarashi with 15.14: 6.60 points. Bronze went to the Australian Owen Wright. While Igarashi, who was born in Huntington Beach, California, was unable to cope with the pressure and expectations of his compatriots in the final, Wright defeated the favorite superstar of the scene, the Brazilian Gabriel Medina, with 11.97: 11.77 in the battle for third place Points and celebrated his medal on the beach with a party. Six years after he was hit by a wave and seriously injured and had to fight for his life and future, bronze glistened like gold to him. A great victory for him too.

Italo Ferreira, World Champion 2019, is the son of a fishmonger from Baia Formosa in northern Brazil. He learned to surf on a foam box his father had used to sell fish. There wasn’t enough money for more. He has been one of the big three on the international surfing scene for years. Medina and the American John John Florence are the other two. Two charismatic superstars who were always a wavelength ahead of him in terms of popularity. This is about to change.

Olympic gold, as demonstrated by the premiere in Japan, is also a hard currency in surfing. And the way Ferreira won it left no doubt about its exceptional class. In the quarterfinals he defeated the Japanese Hiroto Ohhara with 16.30: 11.90 points just as easily as Igarashi in the final. Against Ohhara he achieved the highest score of the entire competition: 9.73 points, just below the maximum score of 10. The two best waves of a round are counted and added up.

With technology and a fine feeling

Owen Wright. His story as a surfer, his ordeal, found a happy ending on Tsurigasaki Beach, a hundred kilometers east of Tokyo. The waves there, their height and strength, were not what Wright’s ideas, his dreams and nightmares, come close to. Too small. The Australian is a man for the big breakers. There he is in his element. But with all his strength he can also make it a few sizes smaller if need be.

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