By Juliana Barbassa from the New York Times 27/03/15

Brazil has gone surf crazy.

In December, when a 20-year-old Brazilian named Gabriel Medina won the world’s premier surfing title, becoming the first South American man to do so, the country erupted in celebration. Mr. Medina’s path to the championship had been followed closely in Brazil throughout 2014, each victory celebrated in typically boisterous Brazilian fashion by flag-waving, often teary, always emotional fans. His arrival at the airport in São Paulo after winning the title was a mob scene and a media frenzy.

But Mr. Medina is only the most visible exponent of a rising generation of surfers known by the collective moniker “the Brazilian Storm.” This year, seven of the 34 male contenders on the championship tour are Brazilian — a striking percentage in a sport long dominated by Australians, Americans and South Africans. The first event of the year, which ended earlier this month in Australia, was won by a 19-year-old Brazilian named Filipe Toledo. Four of the final eight contenders were Brazilian.

Brazil has more than 4,000 miles of coastline, and Brazilians have been surfing its waves at least since the Australian surfer Peter Troy gave a demonstration in Rio de Janeiro in 1964. So why the sudden dominance?

The answer is that the country itself has changed. Following the rocky decades of the 1980s and ’90s, when financial shocks and political instability battered the economy and inflation reached peaks of more than 2,000 percent a year, Brazil in the 2000s experienced more than a decade of stability and growth. The abysmal gap between rich and poor narrowed a little, and the middle class ballooned from about 15 percent of the population in the early ’80s to nearly a third by 2012.

What did this have to do with surfing? Everything.

Read the full article here.