{"id":106296,"date":"2021-07-27T07:42:13","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T07:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=106296"},"modified":"2021-07-27T09:59:19","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T09:59:19","slug":"historic-bronze-for-aussie-in-surfings-olympic-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=106296","title":{"rendered":"Historic bronze for Aussie in surfing's Olympic debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aussie surfing star Owen Wright has won Australia an historic bronze medal, beating Brazilian two-time world champion Gabriel Medina in the minor medal contest at the Tokyo Olympics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wright was ecstatic with the result, hooting and hollering with his teammates – the Aussie surfing team nicknamed the Irukandjis – after blocking Medina with priority in the dying seconds of the contest to guarantee him the bronze.<\/p>\n

OLYMPICS LIVE BLOG: DAY 4 UPDATES, NEWS<\/strong><\/em><\/a> |<\/strong><\/em> TOKYO GAMES EVENTS CENTRE: SCHEDULE, RESULTS, MEDAL TALLY<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\"Owen<\/p>\n

Wright, from Culburra on the NSW south coast, recorded a two-wave score of 11.97 to narrowly pip the Brazilian's 11.77.<\/p>\n

"I feel like I'm walking on a cloud, I couldn't be any prouder," Wright said.<\/p>\n

"I just stuck to him… my heart was beating so hard and I was taking wave after wave."<\/p>\n

The 31-year-old Aussie just missed out on surfing off for the gold medal when he lost to Brazil's 2019 world champion Italo Ferreira in the semis earlier today.<\/p>\n

In fact, his misstep with priority in that duel cost him dearly.<\/p>\n

Wright was devastated when he lost priority with three minutes remaining, slapping the water in frustration as he went down 13.17 to 12.47 to Ferreira.<\/p>\n

\"Owen<\/p>\n

His feat in Tokyo is a huge career highlight, coming almost six years after he suffered a near-fatal head injury surfing at Hawaii's Pipeline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Due to bleeding on the brain and swelling, Wright missed the entire 2016 season while he continued his slow recovery. When he finally returned to the water<\/a>, it took Wright plenty of time to simply stand up, let alone attempt the demanding turns and carves that are needed to compete at the highest level.<\/p>\n

Ferreira went on to claim gold and become the first Olympic champion in men's surfing by beating Kanoa Igarashi in the final.<\/p>\n

In the first minute of the clash, Ferreira was swallowed by a wave and up popped half of his broken board.<\/p>\n

A fresh board was given to him on the beach, and Ferreira didn't miss a beat with an emphatic victory 15.14 to 6.60.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Igarashi had stunned Medina in the semis with an incredible manoeuvre when he went further than a 360 degree mid-air rotation from the top of a wave.<\/p>\n

In the women's draw, fellow Australian Sally Fitzgibbons was reduced to tears after a shock quarter-final defeat to Japan's Amuro Tsuzuki put her out of medal contention<\/a>.<\/p>\n

"It hurts so bad," she said.<\/p>\n

"This one's probably the toughest loss of my career. I just wanted to do it so bad for my teammates and my country… my heart's shattered."<\/p>\n

– with Ben Glover<\/strong><\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0clicking here!<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aussie surfing star Owen Wright has won Australia an historic bronze medal, beating Brazilian two-time world champion Gabriel Medina in the minor medal contest at […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106296"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106298,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106296\/revisions\/106298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}