In Pics: Surfing event at Paris Olympics 2024 happening 15,730 kilometres away in Tahiti

Athletes competing at the surfing event at Tahiti’s Teahupo’o are being housed on a cruise ship, called the Aranui 5 ship, which has been docked about 45 minutes from the surfing venue. Organisers have called it the first-ever floating athlete village

Updated: July 29, 2024 13:27 IST

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Why is Teahupo’o, which is 15,730 km 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 organizers of the Games: that the Olympics will be spread across French territory. (PC: Agencies)

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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. (PC: Agencies)

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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. (PC: Agencies)

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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. (PC: Agencies)

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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. (PC: Agencies)

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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. (PC: Agencies)

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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.’ (PC: Agencies)

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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. (PC: Agencies)