Whale of a shot: Surfing semifinal yields marine moment

A whale breaches during women

A whale breaches during women’s surfing at the 2024 Paris Olympics. – Credit: (Photo by Jerome BROUILLET)

Maybe Tahiti is a cheat code, but photographer Jerome Brouillet is having a double-gold Olympics.

Brouillet’s name leapt into this space earlier in the Games when he caught surfer Gabriel Medina ‘in flight’ during his record-breaking 9.90 ride on the waves of Teahupo’o.

Now, while observing a couple of other Olympic surfers, he’s caught another a very different mammal in flight.

It’s a whale. A humpback whale for you non-cetologists out there.

Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb and Costa Rica’s Brisa Hennessy were minding their business — literally — in the women’s surfing semifinals, unaware that their scene was being stolen off in the distance.

Weston-Webb won silver, while Hennessy finished fourth. But it seems to us that perhaps they should’ve found our whale friend for his take.

Check out the pic below.

SEE MORE: Gabriel Medina in flight: The story behind the photo of the Olympics so far

Whale leaps into photo during surfing semifinal at 2024 Paris Olympics

A whale steals attention from the surfing semifinal between Brazil's Tatiana Weston-Webb and Costa Rica's Brisa Hennessy.

A whale breaches as Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb and Costa Rica’s Brisa Hennessy (R) compete in the women’s surfing semifinals during the 2024 Paris Olympics in Teahupo’o on the French Polynesian Island of Tahiti (August 5, 2024).

(Photo by Jerome BROUILLET)