Tahiti Surf Style: The Medal Runs, Results And Winners' Celebration

"Duck-diving" En Route Out To Catch One: Brisa Hennessy of Costa Rica pierces the barrel of a wave ... [+] as it breaks right-to-left toward the beach in the 2024 Olympics women's surfing bronze medal final on Teahupo'o, Tahiti on August 5. (Photo by Ben Thouard-Pool/Getty Images)

The world’s second-ever surfer-invasion of the Olympic Games in history is done and dusted. Gauging from the beaming faces of the winners and the runners-up at the medals ceremony overlooking some fantastic sundown wavesets in Teahupo’o, Tahiti’s harbor on Monday evening, quite a number of these surfers will be hanging ten on a few barstools in some of the French Polynesian surf capital’s clubbier bars and hitting the beaches until they have their fill later in the month.

That’s the drill out in Tahiti: The “Olympics” may be technically over as a medal-rush convocation for these superb athletes, but the Teahupo’o wavesets haven’t gotten the memo that the Olympics are over for now. Some people did get that memo. Lightweight sometime surfer/actor-boy, Saturday Night Live jokester and erstwhile NBC surf presenter Colin Jost turned in his mic, slipped out of his snappy NBC blazer and was safely winging it back from French Polynesia to Europe, mysteriously ignoring the finals yesterday. Poof, parachuted back into his “real” American-tv life.

But the Endless Summer of global surfing is madly up and running and will be doing that well past Labor Day down into the nether regions of the year — which is not to imply that “Labor Day,” as a concept or even just as a long barbecue opportunity has ever struck a great impression on the surf community. By definition, the surfers’ Endless Summer has no such back-to-school punctuation mark as that September weekend. Seventy-one per cent of the planet’s surface is water. The global littoral belongs to these water people, so they’ll keep on keeping on.

After The Last Heat, He Knew He Won: Kauli Vaast of France celebrates winning the gold medal in ... [+] men's surfing at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games August 5, 2024 in Teahupo'o, Tahiti. (Photo by Ben Thouard-Pool/Getty Images)

Among the acqua-people, one surfer who will certainly be sticking around Teahupo’o is local boy, Polynesian-Frenchman, and Monday’s rather spectacular men’s gold-medal winner Kauli Vaast, who’s been more or less raised on these wavesets and who remains arguably the one surfer in the world who knows the peculiarities of these waters like no other. Pictured above onboard his tender after his medal winning heat, Vaast raised his shortboard in salute and motored in to great acclaim from the assembled boat-and-shore audiences. He was promptly thronged, pictured forward, in the orange/pink rash guard on the little tender motoring between the two larger spectator boats, below.

France's Kauli Vaast (C red) celebrates after winning in the men's surfing gold medal final, during ... [+] the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, in Teahupo'o, on the French Polynesian Island of Tahiti, on August 5, 2024. (Photo by Jerome BROUILLET / AFP) (Photo by JEROME BROUILLET/AFP via Getty Images)

Boldly styling his ur-Polynesian arm-and-leg ink, certainly one of the most fashionable and politically important spectators at the celebration was the president of French Polynesia, Moetai Brotherson, below right, on his own chauffeured vehicle as per the rules for political bigwigs worldwide. Presidents Biden and Macron have nothing on Brotherson in stylish transport, nor in snappy celebratory gangsta/hipstah-sign vocabulary, nor in serious-looking security sidemen, nor do the French or American presidents have their own personal home-grown gold-medalist surfer, so there. French Polynesia will be the coolest joint and will have the coolest president on any littoral, period. From his Gauguin-like goatee to his amazing beflowered shirt, Brotherson’s cool-as-a-cucumber fashion message to the world is: Come on out to surf in Teahupo’o, the water’s fine.

TEAHUPO'O, FRENCH POLYNESIA - AUGUST 05: (R) Moetai Brotherson, President of French Polynesia, ... [+] reacts during the men's gold medal match of surfing on day nine of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 on August 05, 2024 in Teahupo'o, French Polynesia. (Photo by Ed Sloane/Getty Images)

The women acqua-people did well on their shortboards on August 5, with the ebullient, much-garlanded Caroline Marks providing Team USA with its lone gold. Running her a close second was Brazil’s graceful Tatiana Weston-Webb, and, yelling with delight in her final heat as she nailed bronze was France’s other medalist, Johanne Defay, pictured right on the podium set on the medal-party point overlooking the bay. Superb athletes, bright faces full of life, theirs is the beauty unlike any other, honed in competition.

TEAHUPO'O, FRENCH POLYNESIA - AUGUST 05: Silver Medalist Tatiana Weston-Webb of Team Brazil, Gold ... [+] Medalist Caroline Marks of Team United States, and Bronze Medalist Johanne Defay of Team France react during the Women's surfing medal ceremony on day nine of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 on August 05, 2024 in Teahupo'o, French Polynesia. (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

Australian champion and silver medal winner Jack Robinson, pictured left on the podium with Vaast, below, gave Vaast a splendid go, as Robinson himself was given a great fight in the semifinal heat earlier in the day by the ebullient men’s bronze winner and irrepressible aerialist from Brazil, Gabriel Medina.

TEAHUPO'O, FRENCH POLYNESIA - AUGUST 05: (L-R) Silver medalist Jack Robinson of Team Australia, gold ... [+] medalist Kauli Vaast of Team France and bronze medalist Gabriel Medina of Team Brazil pose on podium on the podium during the Men's surfing medal ceremony on day nine of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at on August 05, 2024 in Teahupo'o, French Polynesia. (Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images)

The camaraderie among surfers is at once more flexible and more intense than we might find in other sports, flexible in the sense that it can wax and wane as the individual competitions sharpen out on the water. There’s a simple reason for that: The ocean in this quite dangerous sport remains, always, the boss. What the athletes fight as they look to harness the right wave under the pressure of timed heats is Nature itself, and they fight that in common, together. All of which is to say, the August 5 semifinal and final heats were of high intensity, as befits any fight in any sport for Olympic acknowledgement. Below, the eventual silver medalist Tatiana Weston-Web, every bit the falcon on the prowl, paddles out in her semifinal heat on that search for the big one to ride.

TEAHUPO'O, FRENCH POLYNESIA - AUGUST 5: Tatiana Weston-Webb of Brazil paddles in the women's surfing ... [+] semi-finals of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games August 5, 2024 in Teahupo'o, on the French Polynesian Island of Tahiti. (Photo by Ben Thouard-Pool/Getty Images)

The “drop-in,” or for the laity, the moment at which a surfer “catches” a wave is a vertiginous affair, requiring precise positioning, and split-second burst of speed, then a jump up to get the footing right, and a swift drop into what surfers hope is the barrel. Below, silver medalist Jack Robinson drops into one of his semifinal waves, a heat that he won before stepping up into the finals against Kauli Vast.

TEAHUPO'O, FRENCH POLYNESIA - AUGUST 5: Australia's Jack Robinson drops into a wave in the men's ... [+] surfing semi-finals, during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, in Teahupo'o, on the French Polynesian Island of Tahiti, on August 5, 2024. (Photo by Ben Thouard-Pool/Getty Images)

Below, Vast demonstrates some of that gold-medal barrel-chasing form in the quarterfinals. Note his left hand skating along the left wall of the “greenroom” as he moves along. That’s not just for fun: it provides just that extra — if highly frangible — third point of support in addition to his legs more or less locked down (by the downforce of his crouch) on the board.

TEAHUPO'O, FRENCH POLYNESIA - AUGUST 01: Kauli Vaast of France gets a barrel in the heats of the ... [+] men's surfing quarter-finals on day six of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 on August 01, 2024 in Teahupo'o, French Polynesia. (Photo by Ben Thouard - Pool/Getty Images)