2024 OLYMPIC SURFING AT TEAHUPO’O: WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

By Sam George

Recent headlines concerned with Kelly Slater’s Olympic aspirations has me thinking about the 2024 Paris Games, and the surfing event to be held at Teahupo’o, Tahiti, where, if everything goes right, it could all go terribly wrong.

The logistics of holding the event 15,706 kilometers away from the main Olympic site in France isn’t the biggest issue here. Because surf contests have been held at Teahupo’o for decades now and both the event organizers and the residents of the tiny Tahitian village have the whole show wired. No worries about crowd control, either, seeing as not only is there no place to park at the End Of The Road, but no place to watch the event except from Teahupo’o’s narrow reef pass, which can only hold so many camera boats, girlfriends on jet skis, plastic kayaks and smoothie barges before it starts looking like Spring Break at Lake Havasu.

Sure, they’ll be none of the pomp and gravity of conventional Olympic competition; no Athlete’s Village, major network interview studios or stadium’s filled with cheering fans. For the majority of competitors, most of them culled directly from the WSL ranks, it’ll be just another contest at Teahupo’o’. Which, of course, brings us to my point.

I’ll assume that the Olympic Organizing Committee has seen plenty of footage of Teahupo’o, and have a grasp of what actually goes on there. If not, I’ll make it easy for them. Big, scary waves. Really big. In Teahupo’o’s case, let’s say 20-foot minimum. Which means deadly big. Forget the nightmare of it being flat (which can happen) or overhead and blown out (which has happened), even if it is eight-to ten-feet it will be a letdown to everyone, network broadcasters included, all of whom are hoping to see Olympic surfing gold being won in Tahitian Code Red.

And there’s the problem. Because if everything does go right, and sometime during the allotted one-week schedule a really big south swell and good winds actually arrive, the Olympics could be faced with the truly unique spectacle of presenting athletes competing in an event in which they have no experience. Because make no mistake: very few of the world’s surfers are capable of surfing 20 foot Teahupo’o. And none of became so by surfing in ISA qualifying heats.

It could be bad enough for the men’s division. But for the women surfers, a giant swell could be downright catastrophic. Even a precursory look at this year’s professional and amateur rankings will show that with the exception of Tahiti’s Vahine Fierro, not a single female Olympic qualifier has ever surfed a truly big day at Teahupo’o’. I’m not saying that none of the women qualifiers are capable of surfing a big day at Teahupo’o’. I’m just saying that up to now they haven’t.

So imagine a Winter Olympic slalom ski racers being told that, in fact, they’ll be competing in the ski jumping event on the large hill? That’s essentially the exact scenario that many of our Summer Olympic surfers will be facing if everything goes right at Teahupo’o’. For the athletes, the consequence of failure could be grievous injury, but for the Olympic broadcast, it would be seeing a large percentage of the competitors electing, in all good conscience, to not even paddle out. And who could blame them, considering that many of these first timers will be going for gold at a terrifying wave that takes years of experience to wire. A place called Teahupo’o’, whose name translated to English means “the severing of heads”, or, more colloquially, “place of skulls.” For the sake of the O.O.C. and all the over 2 billion viewers who watch the summer Olympics, the question must be raised? Have we thought this through?