The World Surf League has banned Charles Rodrigues, step father and coach/confidante to 2014 World Champ Gabriel Medina from the Surfers’ Areas during the Australian leg of the 2017 Samsung Galaxy World Championship Tour.
The WSL’s release stating the ban is ‘following an incident involving League officials in Portugal last season.’
What exactly happened during the incident has not been specified, although it’s safe to assume it wasn’t a polite knock on the head judges’s door and a “I say old boy, I thought Gabriel’s score was a trifle low, what?”
The WSL’s official statement continues, “In addition to personally apologizing to the officials involved, Mr. Medina has fully cooperated with the League’s investigation into the incident and has accepted the sanction of suspension (effective October 2016 through April 2017).”
Six months! Pretty solid ban there, although Charles has already served over half of it, on ‘parole’. Whether sentencing has taken this long, or whether only just been made public is unclear, although presumably Charles would’ve known if he were a persona non grata at Pipe…
A relatively polarising figure for his various public displays of malcontent whenever Gabs doesn’t win, whatever your stance on competitive stepdads, there’s no doubting Charles made for good entertainment.
How will Gabs cope without Charles for the vital Aussie leg, on a season for which he’s being widely tipped as the World Title favourite?
Our guess is absolutely fine… possibly better.
As WSL bans go, Charles’ ban is longer than the one Jeremy received for his J-Bay outburst, but not as long as the one Ben Mondy received from webcast commentary for writing mean stuff about the surfers.
Both Jeremy and Ben have repented and reformed and been allowed to reintegrate back into surfing society.
Mondy said, “If I can turn my life around and get back in the WSL’s good books, anyone can. If Charles needs me, my door is always open.”
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