Leonardo Fioravanti, of Italy, surfs during the first round of the 2024 Summer Olympics surfing competition Saturday, July 27, 2024, in Teahupo’o, Tahiti. (AP Photo)
It has served as a picturesque location for big-budget Hollywood classics. Now, the mighty ocean and abundant aquatic life of Tahiti’s Teahupo’o will host the Olympics.
Why is Teahupo’o, which is 15,730 kms away from official hosts Paris, selected as the place for the Olympics’s surfing competitions, you may ask. The answer is simply because it fulfills one of the pledges made by the organisers of the Games: that the Olympics will be spread across French territory.
Tahiti, an overseas country of the French Republic, is also the political centre of French Polynesia. “The decision to stage the surfing competitions at Teahupo’o aligns with Paris 2024’s ambition to spread the Games across France. It offers an opportunity to engage French overseas territories and their communities in the Olympic Games—for the first time in history—while showcasing France’s rich and diverse heritage,” the official website of the Paris Olympics reads.
At Paris Olympics surfing venue, waves up to 23 feet
Teahupo’o, already a well-known place to surfers worldwide, is famous for its monstrous waves ranging from 6.6 to 9.8 feet and sometimes up to 23 feet, for the athletes to navigate.
But the decision to host the event here resulted in controversy with the locals clashing with the organizers over construction of an aluminum judging tower that required drilling into the reef, which the locals protested as that would lead to the damage of its corals and marine life.
Tensions escalated further when a barge razed sections of coral on its way to the construction site on the reef in December. The video of the incident caused an uproar on social media and the organizers were forced to scale back due to the backlash.
Controversial aluminum tower
Ultimately, a decision was made to construct a nine-ton, 50 square metres, three story high aluminum tower which is ‘less imposing and substantially reduced in size and weight.’
“Based on thorough analysis of the different options and the priorities shared by the various stakeholders, the project for a new tower that is less imposing and substantially reduced in size and weight was judged to be the best option. This presents the advantage of being able to reduce the depth of drilling for the foundations of the tower and allow the use of a barge with a shallower draught during the construction phase,” the organizers said in a new release.
This is the second time that surfing has made it as an official sport in the Olympics with the discipline making its debut in the 2020 Tokyo edition. The surfing events at Paris will take place from July 27 to July 30 with 48 surfers participating.
Surfers have a floating Games Village
While the rest of the athletes headed to Paris have been talking about cardboard beds, in Tahiti athletes are being housed on a cruise ship, called the Aranui 5 ship, which has been docked about 45 minutes from the surfing venue. The Associated Press reports that the ship can accommodate about 230 passengers in over 100 cabins, with eight guest decks, a spa and gym, according to its website. It’s anchored just off shore and the surfers, coaches and others take small boats to get back and forth.
Organisers have called it the first-ever floating athlete village.
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First uploaded on: 28-07-2024 at 15:19 IST
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