World Olympic Surfers Will Not Experience Paris to the Fullest Written by Margaret Fleming DISPLAYED July 29, 2024 | 8:00 a.m. This is the second Olympics that surfers have been cut off from the main action. Almost 10,000 kilometres from Paris, in French Polynesia, is where the surfing competition is being held. Florence competing at Tsurigasaki Surfing Beach at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Summer Games (Andrew Nelles/USA TODAY Network) For the second time ever, 48 athletes stepped aboard their surfboards to compete in the Olympics starting on Saturday. The surfing events at the 2024 Summer Olympics will be held in Teahupo’o, Tahiti, which is in French Polynesia and around 10,000 miles away from Paris. For the second consecutive Games, participants are cut off from the majority of the Olympic fanfare due to this great distance. Olympic surfing debuted.
Surfing occurs early in the Games in both Tokyo and Paris, therefore competitors missed the opening ceremony. (This year’s turned out to be a great show.) And while the organisers attempted to recreate a scaled-down version of the Olympic Village on a cruise ship in order to preserve another essential experience, several nations, such as the United States and Italy, arranged their own housing in the homes of locals on land (where athletes typically stay for World Surf League competitions in Teahupo’o). “I think that’s a big part of the Olympics, being on this world stage with all these different types of athletes, so it’s kind of a bummer we don’t get to experience that whole part of it,” John John Florence of Team USA, the
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