With the final surf qualifiers running this weekend and athletes snatching the last spots for the Olympics, the anticipation for this year’s Games is growing. The 2024 venue for the surf competitions promises spectacle, as they are set to take place on one of the most iconic waves on the planet: Teahupo’o.
Home to the island of Tahiti in French Polynesia, an overseas territory of France, the wave offers the perfect setting for the Olympic stage.
The wave is known for its roaring power and has become a staple in the professional surfer’s repertoire. It produces big barrels; forming a tube that surfers can ride through.
Upon the announcement for the venue, locals and environmentalists, however, were worried the local village and the coral reef would be damaged by the plans of building housing for athletes, a new judging tower, and the proposed widening of infrastructure around the small village. Teahupo’o’s charm lies in opposing the usual popular surf destination with not even one surf shop about.
Videos of construction for a new tower were shared online in December. The footage revealed a barge scraping the reef on its way to the construction site, which led to massive outrage from locals and conservationists.
Although criticism raised by the island nation has led to some changes in the plans – with 98 per cent of Olympic housing being within local’s homes and athletes being accommodated on a cruise ship anchored near the wave – concerns over the impact of the Games remain.
Despite scaling back the plans for construction of a new tower, fishers still fear that drilling into the reef could attract ciguateram, an algae that infects fish and will make people sick when consumed.
French Polynesians fought back but Tahiti poses another example for the overarching question, that we’ve seen with multiple of the past Games: how can the Olympics strike a balance between modern progress and sustainability?
Of course, it’s not all black and white: many locals look forward to the Games and the economic benefit it will bring to the Island. Via Ara o Teahupo’o´s President, Cindy Otcenasek, said: “We hear a lot about the infrastructure and heritage that will be left by the Olympic Games, but we already have an ancestral heritage […] Teahupo’o is the land of God before being the land of the Games.”
