On which wave will the Paris 2024 surfing event take place? Until October, there was no doubt: Teahupoo, on the Tahiti peninsula, in French Polynesia, was the ideal spot. The most beautiful wave in the world for many surfers, but also one of the most powerful, and an ideal swell expected during the Games. And a little extra for the French team, with its two Tahitian surfers, Vahine Fierro and Kauli Vaast, fine connoisseurs of this wave.
A scaffolding complicated everything. For twenty years, World Surf League judges scrutinized the athletes from a wooden tower, erected before the competition, then dismantled. But this structure no longer meets safety standards, and a new aluminum judges’ tower, higher and heavier, is under construction in Tahiti. It has even already been paid for and would have cost 4.4 million euros, according to Nahema Temarii, the Polynesian Minister of Sports, Youth and Delinquency Prevention.
This tower requires stronger foundations than the previous one in Teahupoo Coral. However, coral is the lungs of the lagoon. Residents and fishermen fear a deterioration of this ecosystem, while surfers fear a change in the underwater relief which could alter the wave. On Thursday, a petition launched against the construction of this tower had collected more than 162,000 signatures.
Dissensions within the independence party
While hoping to maintain the event in Teahupoo, the president of French Polynesia, Moetai Brotherson, therefore considered, on November 10, moving the surfing event to another wave in Tahiti, a few dozen kilometers away. A wave close to the beach, where the judges’ tower would no longer be necessary.
“It has to be done in Teahupoo for obvious reasons of investment by the population there for several years (…), to host the Olympics”, indicated, Wednesday, on the set of the local channel TNTV, the MP Tematai Le Gayic, an elected official from the same party (the independence party Tavini Huiraatira) as Mr. Brotherson. “We should keep the lightweight aluminum tower on the pads of the old tower. This is the direction the president wants to go. Now we have to convince the Paris 2024 [organizing] Committee. There are dry toilets, there is no need for eight hundred meter pipes so that they can go to the toilet on site. » Because the wastewater evacuation pipes, but also the pipes to carry the optical fiber, are other reasons for concern for the opponents of the new tower.
Very discreet for three days, Mr. Brotherson also faces strong internal opposition. He embodies the moderate current of the independence party, while his father-in-law, the president of the party, Oscar Temaru, as well as the President of the Assembly Antony Géros, represent the traditional wing. These internal dissensions gained momentum as the vote on the community budget approached.
In political difficulty within his own party, Moetai Brotherson cannot afford to lose the confidence of his population. It must therefore reconcile the Polynesian pride of hosting the Games and the environmental fears of some Tahitians. Without forgetting the Games Organizing Committee, which he should meet during his next trip to France, where he is expected on Saturday. The president of Paris 2024, Tony Estanguet, and the minister of sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castera, are expected to come to Tahiti in December to try to iron out this thorny issue.