 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(June 2015) |
| Billabong Pro Teahupoo 2015 at the Surf | |||||||
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| Location | Teahupo'o (PYF) | ||||||
| Dates | 14 to 25 Aug | ||||||
| Competitors | 36 from 8 nations | ||||||
| Medalists | |||||||
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The Billabong Pro Teahupoo 2015 was an event of the Association of Surfing Professionals for 2015 ASP World Tour.
Billabong Pro Teahupoo is a professional surfing competition of the ASP World Tour held at the break Teahupo'o in Taiarapu, Tahiti. The Billabong Pro Teahupoo was first founded in 1999, and ever since has been recognized as "one of the world's heaviest big wave competitions". This is because Teahupoo is the only known natural wave break in the world that breaks below sea level. It is also "renowned for being the deadliest competition associated with surfing to this present date". The Billabong Pro Teahupoo has not claimed any human lives since the founding of the surfing event in 1999, but the wave has claimed lives over the years.
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This event was held from 08 to 19 July at Teahupo'o, (Tahiti, French Polynesia) and opposed by 36 surfers.
Teahupoʻo is a village on the south-west coast of the island of Tahiti, French Polynesia, southern Pacific Ocean. It is known for the surf break and heavy, glassy waves offshore, often reaching 2 to 3 m, and sometimes up to 7 meters. It is the site of the annual Billabong Pro Tahiti surf competition, part of the World Championship Tour (WCT) of the Association of Surfing Professionals World Tour surfing circuit and used to be one stop in the World Tour of the International Bodyboarding Association. Bodyboarding pioneers Mike Stewart and Ben Severson were the first to surf Teahupo'o in 1986 and it soon became an underground spot for thrill-seeking bodyboarders. Few professional surfers rode Teahupo'o during the early 1990s and it was only in 1998, at the Gotcha Tahiti Pro, that Teahupo'o became widely recognized as having some of the heaviest waves in the world. On August 17, 2000 Laird Hamilton is credited with surfing the "heaviest wave" ever ridden, documented in the film Riding Giants. In 2003 the late Malik Joyeux successfully rode one of the largest waves ever ridden.
Tahiti is the largest island of the Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia, located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean. Divided into two parts, Tahiti Nui and Tahiti Iti, the island was formed from volcanic activity; it is high and mountainous with surrounding coral reefs. Its population is 189,517 inhabitants (2017), making it the most populous island of French Polynesia and accounting for 68.7% of its total population.
French Polynesia is an overseas collectivity of the French Republic and its sole overseas country. It is composed of 118 geographically dispersed islands and atolls stretching over an expanse of more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) in the South Pacific Ocean. Its total land area is 4,167 square kilometres (1,609 sq mi).
The tournament was won by Jérémy Florès (FRA), who beat Gabriel Medina (BRA) in final.
Jérémy Florès is a French surfer who grew up on Reunion Island, France, where he began surfing at the age of 3. He continued his surfing development on family trips to Australia, Europe and Hawaii, all the while maintaining his education through correspondence courses. He turned professional in 2007, the same year in which he was awarded 'Rookie of the Year' by the WSL, and has won the prestigious Billabong Pipeline Masters in Hawaii both in 2010 and 2017. In 2015, Jeremy also beat reigning champion Gabriel Medina in the prestigious Billabong Pro Teahupoo, Tahiti with a 16.57 total heat score.
Gabriel Medina Pinto Ferreira is a Brazilian professional surfer, also the 2014 and 2018 WSL World Champion. Medina joined the world's elite of the World Surf League Tour in 2011, and in his rookie year he finished within the top 12 of the ASP World Tour at the age of 17. In March 2014 he won the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast. Media sources credit him as being the second person to have executed a maneuver called the "Backflip". Medina also became the first person ever to land this move in competition.
