Where will Olympic surfing take place? Why Tahiti, not France, will ...

While boats floated the River Seine, Celine Dion belted out “Hymne à l’amour” on the Eiffel Tower and a masked character ziplined through Paris with the Olympic torch, a group of Olympic athletes celebrated Friday’s opening ceremony on the opposite side of the world.

In Tahiti, 48 surfers from 21 nations wait with equal parts thrill and terror for their turn to tame the world’s most daunting waves.

But why is the Olympic surfing competition held in Tahiti, and what makes the island’s waves so special? Here’s what you need to know:

The largest island in French Polynesia, Tahiti is located in the central Pacific Ocean, over 2,000 miles south of Hawaii and 3,000 miles northeast of Australia.

It’s located nearly 10,000 miles away from Paris but is designated as an overseas country of France. The surfing in Tahiti will mark the farthest distance from a host city an Olympic event has ever been held.

Tahiti is a tiny nation with a population under 200,000 people and the island’s widest point is just 28 miles across. Many clans lived in Tahiti long before European explorers first visited in the late 16th century.

Tahitians were granted French citizenship in 1946 and today the nation is considered a semi-autonomous territory of France, with its own governing system. French is Tahiti’s official language.

Pronounced cho-poo, Teahupo’o is a village in southeastern Tahiti. The village name roughly translates to “the wall of skulls” or “the heap of heads.” While local tradition says the name honors the son of a murdered king who avenged his father’s death, the translation certainly applies to its local waves as well.

Considered a Mecca of big wave surfing, Teahupo’o waves are some of the heaviest in the world and are renowned for their daunting barrels and monstrous swells. The surfing there is also fearfully revered for the razor-sharp coral reef that is as shallow as 20 inches deep in some spots.

Waves may not get as tall at Teahupo’o compared to other locations, but surfers zip through the wave’s tight barrels with intense speed.

The surfing community can thank storms from thousands of miles away, including the Antarctic, for the Teahupo’o’s powerful waves. Those storms result in swells that are strongest during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter months (April to October) and are then shot across the Pacific Ocean.

The result is a ride over waves with a unique hollow break thanks to the dramatic shift due to the reef’s suddenly-shallow contour.

The weight of the waves and the danger of the reef is responsible for giving Teahupo’o its deadly reputation, as local surfer Briece Taerea was killed in 2000 after he attempted to duck-dive a Macker (a wave nicknamed after the American Mac truck). Taerea struck the reef and then spent two days in a coma before dying in a hospital.

Surfing is in its infancy years as an Olympic competition, debuting at the Tokyo Games in 2021 and being approved for Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028.

In Tokyo, the wave conditions were underwhelming and organizers sought to give the event more recognition in 2024 by relocation the competition to an area more suitable for surfing conditions.

Surfers compete in the shortboard events at the Olympics, meaning they’ll use boards five- and six-feet long rather than eight- to 10-feet long.

The men’s and women’s competitions will be set over six rounds. The first round will feature eight heats, with three surfers per heat. Each surfer is scored by a panelist of five judges, who score each attempt on a scale from one to 10. A 10 is considered a perfect round.

Heats of surfers alternate over a span of 15 to 45 minutes to perform skills and tricks on the waves, depending on conditions. There is no limit to the number of waves they can catch. Scores are based on five categories of criteria which include degree of difficulty, innovation, variety, combination, speed, power and flow. The highest and lowest of the five judges’ scorecards are discarded.

The winners of each heat in Round 1 advance to Round 3, while the losers compete in eight heats of two surfers apiece in Round 2, with those winners advancing to Round 3.

In Round 3, the 16 remaining surfers compete head-to-head in single-elimination competition until the semifinal. There, the losers of the two semifinal heats will compete for the bronze, while the two semifinal heat winners compete again for the gold and silver.

The origins of surfing date back to Tahiti’s region, as it was invented by ancient Polynesians who later took the sport to Hawaii.

In the late 18th century, British captain James Cook stayed in Tahiti and noted in his journal: “Their chief amusement was carried on by the stern of an old canoe, with this before them they swam out as far as the outermost breach, then one or two would get into it and opposing the blunt end to the breaking wave were hurried in with incredible swiftness. Sometimes they were carried almost ashore.”

(Photo: Jerome Brouillet / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)

Mark Puleo is a News Staff Editor at The Athletic. Before joining The Athletic, Mark covered breaking weather news as a digital journalist and front page digital editor with AccuWeather. He is a graduate of Penn State University and its John Curley Center for Sports Journalism. Follow Mark on Twitter @ByMarkPuleo