Tahiti's Teahupo'o "is one of the most powerful and deadly waves on the planet for surfing," in Surfer Today's view, a place that has only been surfed since 1985 but one that now features on the World Surf League's championship tour. It's also the designated spot for the Paris 2024 Olympic surfing competition, though, as the BBC reports, preparations for the event have been put on hold after apparent damage to the coral reef there. The Olympics website explains what makes Teahupo'o so fearsome: "Underwater mechanics, swell, and winds come together to produce one of the heaviest waves in the world, with a shallow coral reef adding an element of danger to the equation." It's also a feature that requires protection.
The BBC reports a 20-year-old wooden tower installed on the reef gives judges a perch, but a new aluminum tower is planned for the Olympics, with a press release explaining the wooden tower's "existing foundations could not be used in their current state." Construction of the replacement is now on ice after Save Teahupo'o Reef posted footage that the group said showed a construction barge stuck on the reef and damaging the coral in the process on Friday. The group wrote in part, "The barge got stuck on the reef several times ... This is on high tide and no load on the barge."
The barge was ultimately freed from the reef and taken back to the marina, per Reuters. "This doesn't seem worth it," wrote Olympic gold-medal surfer Carissa Moore on Instagram. The president of French Polynesia seemed to agree. AFP quotes Moetai Brotherson as saying, "If there's no solution in the end ... we must call into question the survival of the surf contests at Teahupo'o." The International Surfing Association, which oversees Olympic surfing, said the French Polynesian government has halted "all further testing and preparations to draw lessons following the incident on the reef," per the BBC. The surfing events are slotted for July 27-30—almost 10,000 miles from Paris. (More Olympics stories.)
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