Waves Of Controversy: The Battle Over Teahupo’o’s Olympic Judging Tower

Only the second Olympic Games to feature surfing, anticipation for the 2024 Paris Olympics is palpable. But rather than selecting a nearby break at Hossegor or Biarritz, the 2024 Olympians won’t be heading to France at all—instead, they’ll be deep in the South Pacific.

The island of Tahiti is no stranger to professional surf competitions on its shores—the World Surf League’s Championship Tour has hosted numerous events at the infamous Teahupo’o break over the years. When a southwest swell brings it to life, the “End of the Road,” as it’s affectionately called, is one of the most notorious—and heaviest—slabs of water in the world.

However, the decision to relocate the event to an entirely different part of the world is the least of the International Olympic Committee’s decisions regarding the second surf competition. In preparation for the games, the IOC unveiled it will continue construction plans for a new judging tower at Teahupo’o.  

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Greenwashing The Games

The IOC’s proposition involves something a bit more permanent—an multimillion-dollar, oversized aluminum judging tower that will be permanently drilled into place, perforating the reef below. The original proposals for the platform was a three-story behemoth, including an air-conditioned room for internet servers, a restroom with a dubious sewage connection to the nearby lagoon, and underwater fiber-optic cables for connectivity to shore. The lack of a thorough environmental impact assessment conducted before construction broke ground was a clear indication—much of the IOC’s endeavors for sustainability, including its Committee on the Ecological Transformation of the Games—were clearly not their top priority.

Led by environmental advocacy organization VAOT Vaiara o Teahupoo, and a coalition of local community members and notable professional surfers, including hometown legend Matahi Drollet, are concerned about the environmental oversights of the project, arguing that the structure will likely irreparably damage reef health, even potentially altering the structure of the wave by a degradation of fault lines in the reef. 

Instead, opponents of the plan have proposed a more scaled-back and sustainable compromise, which includes utilizing the existing platform, installing renewable sources of power, and moving the photojournalists and officials onto land, where an observation tower with less environmental implications could be constructed. 

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Unsustainable Developments

Although the Olympics often come with developmental projects—be it constructing new arenas or a village for athletes—the environmental toll the event will take on Tahiti is far from what was promised. Locals are concerned about the lack of transparency and consultation with island officials and leaders, as well as the relatively unexplored long-term impacts on the reef, the lagoon, and on tropical marine flora and fauna that call the area their home, and serve as a food source for the community. 

While the IOC has agreed to slightly modify their construction plans, they’ve maintained that the competition will go on as planned at Teahupo’o and that the existing wooden structure presents a safety risk—not to mention, won’t be large enough to accommodate officials and other employees. However, French Polynesia may be left with lasting problems that far outweigh the benefits of hosting an Olympic event.

When the Olympics site was announced in 2020, the former president of French Polynesia, Edouard Fritch, promised that sustainability would be the top priority in preparing the island for the Games.

"Ecology, the environment, and the principles of sustainable development will be at the heart of the Teahupoo project... [this] involves respecting the ecosystem of the site, including the preservation of the coral reef, the lagoon, the river, and terrestrial and marine biodiversity. In summary, to be sustainable, the competitions and the organization of the 2024 Olympics will adapt to the Teahupoo site, not the other way around.”

The Games themselves have made strict pledges to sustainability, promising to use a majority of sites and venues that already existed, rather than creating new ones in order to reduce their carbon footprint. 

The Latest: Controversial Construction Continues

But the collective dissent of hundreds of thousands of environmental advocates hasn’t been enough to halt plans entirely, and the project is already underway. Initial progress was delayed in early December, after a construction barge intended to install the judging tower became stuck on the reef, damaging coral just as locals predicted. 

Once the situation was resolved, construction has continued amidst international outrage and concern over videos of the stuck barge and broken coral. However, the fight over the environmental preservation of Teahupo’o in the face of a structure for a few days' competition. 

The current president of French Polynesia, Moetai Brotherson, has fielded delegates from both sides of the issue to find a compromise that benefits both his small country and the Olympic proceedings, made a statement that it was too late to move the contest to one of the island’s more-developed breaks.

“If there’s no solution in the end… we must call into question the survival of the surf contests at Teahupo’o,” he said.

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What You Can Do

• Go to saveteahupooreef.com or @saveteahupoo on Instagram to learn more about the situation in Tahiti.
• Join advocates around the world by signing the petition to stop the construction of the platform.