📍Maresias, São Sebastião, SP, Brazil
1993 – 2011“Gabriel Medina Pinto Ferreira was born in December 1993 in São Sebastião, on the green, mountainous north coast of São Paulo state, and grew up in Maresias, a beach village where the Atlantic Forest comes down to a long stretch of sand and some of the most consistent waves in Brazil. His parents separated when he was small, and his mother, Simone, married Charles Saldanha, known as Charlão, a surfer and surf-shop owner whom Gabriel came to consider his father. Gabriel got his first surfboard at about eight, and Charlão taught him and coached him on the waves in front of their home, filming his sessions and pushing him to train every day. He was fiercely competitive and fearless, and by nine he was beating teenagers of fifteen in local contests. He has said that as a boy of ten or eleven he believed the waves at Maresias were always perfect. He learned to fly above the lip in aerials, and by fifteen he was winning international junior events, with the whole of Maresias behind him. In 2011, at seventeen, he joined the world tour and won his first event that year. In 2014 he became the first Brazilian to win the world surfing title, sparking the Brazilian Storm, and he won again in 2018 and 2021. He took Olympic bronze at Paris 2024, with a famous photograph of him seemingly floating above a wave at Teahupo'o. His family founded the Instituto Gabriel Medina on the beach at Maresias, giving local children the chance to surf and study, and huge crowds welcomed him home.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
🛰️ Satellite view · © Google