A few days ago, we posted a video of Gabriel Medina supposedly dropping in on someone. As it turned out, he didn’t really drop in on anyone – at least not without permission. Instead, he was called into the wave by a guy named Bony, and that mistake inspired a wrath of nationalistic anger for making a false assumption. Dudes were just having a a good ol’ party wave. Party waves are the coolest! Our bad.
Afterwards, we were called racists, because Gabriel Medina is Brazilian, and by posting the video, a lot of people thought that we didn’t like Brazilians. “The Inertia, Hating Non-Blond Surfers since 2010” one person wrote. “Fuck the Facts, We’re The Inertia, and We’ll Keep Spreading Hate” was another. We had emails with death-threats! Emails threatening our girlfriends! Shit was crazy.
Then I saw the video of Malia Ward pushing over Gabriel Medina above an hour or two later. “Maybe we should give this one a miss,” I wrote in an email. “Probably best to avoid death-threats and being called racist, you know?” But then I thought something else: this video is interesting. It’s Chris Ward’s daughter, Malia, pushing (what appears to be the world’s #1 ranked surfer) Gabriel Medina off a wave. She does it with such ease! So much grace! Confidence! And according to the title of the video, it’s Gabriel Medina, the number one ranked surfer in the world! This is interesting. We’d be remiss not to share this video. If it was Malia Ward pushing Kelly Slater off a wave, we’d show you. If it was Malia Ward pushing Hulk Hogan off a wave, we’d show you. That would actually be much better. The point is that we’d show you because you might like to see it.
So here you go: This is a video of the USA’s Malia Ward pushing Brazil’s Gabriel Medina off a wave. Oh, and just in case it’s not Gabriel Medina: THIS MIGHT NOT BE GABRIEL MEDINA. But it looks exactly like him, and the video’s title says it is, so we’re pretty sure it is.
