By Lincoln Feast
TEAHUPO'O, Tahiti (Reuters) - Did that just happen? The Paris Olympics surfing community awoke in Tahiti on Tuesday with a collective sense of disbelief after unquestionably the greatest day of Olympic surfing competition went down at Teahupo'o on Monday.
In fact, men's round three action - just eight head-to-head heats over less than five hours - would rank among the best days of any surfing competition ever.
Brazil's Gabriel Medina powered through a giant blue barrel for the highest score of the Olympic surfing event so far, but Tahiti's Teahupo'o stole the show with some of the most incredible waves ever seen in competition.
"The way that people and the world looks at surfing now has changed forever since yesterday," said German surfer Tim Elter.
"We have this huge platform and all of these guys ripping out there showing the world what surfing is. I think that will change a lot, especially in the perception by non-surfers," said Elter, the owner of the most famous bum in surfing after mooning the world during an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction earlier in the competition.
"My trunks were around my knees so I was fighting for them to just get over my ass but the cameramen did me dirty. But it's fine I find it funny."
With competition called off for Tuesday and possibly Wednesday after stormy conditions rolled in, surfers, officials and media got some time to digest the day.
Small groups gathered in the few restaurants at "The End of the Road" as Teahupo'o is also known, or at their accommodations scattered around the village. As rain squalls swept through, singing and laughing from porches could be heard among the laneways as locals and visitors processed the day.
Initial hopes weren't great - forecasts called for fairly modest swells and only the chance of an early morning window before the storm was due to roll in.
The westerly angle of the swell wasn't ideal either, creating dangerous, below sea-level slabs of water that challenged even the world's best surfers.
Specialist surf publications were blown away by the conditions and the performances.
"This morning was the four hours Olympic surfing craved - four hours which may well have changed the world's ideas about our wacky little sport," veteran surf journalist Nick Carroll wrote for Surfline.com.
Surfer magazine said the day would go down in Olympic surfing history, while Stab claimed - with stated bias - that surfing had just won the 2024 Olympics.
Two images, both of Medina, defined the day.
The first shows the Brazilian driving into a huge cerulean cavern, fingers spread wide and eyes focused intently on the exit.
The second shot, moments later from a different angle, has him seemingly levitating a metre above the water, tethered to his board in a similar position, arm extended and finger pointing to the sky - number one indeed.
(Reporting by Lincoln Feast in Tahiti; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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