The locals have spoken and now a petition is up to stop the OG extravaganza.
Bodyboarding is not a part of the Olympic Games, but surf is. Although the games will take place in Paris, France, it is the waves of Tahiti, more precisely Teahupoo, that will host the surfing event. Controversy, however, ensued when the organization revealed that it wanted to install a new judging tower on the reef. The new aluminum tower is going to cost USD $5 million. Upsss.
You see, the Paris 2024 officials are demanding a much larger and complex judging tower to accommodate more people, have a perfect security standard, an air conditioned room for the judges, electricity, running water for toilets and high speed internet cables. Also permanent cables and pipes from shore to the middle of the lagoon.
Although the tower will be disassembled after the event, the impact will be tremendous (for just three days of competition) and would damage the reef and ecosystem. A wooden tower (picture above) has been used at Chopes for years whiteout any incident, and it works just fine.
Here’s what local Matahi Drollet have to say:
“This is going to damage the reef and the whole ecosystem of the lagoon in front of the wave… and in the worst case scenario the wave of Teahupoo also. The Ocean and the lagoon is the most precious place we have here. This is where we get our food from, where we play, where’s we spend most of our time and where we have the most perfect wave in the world. It’s a heritage of our ancestors that we need to preserve. Our association that regroups fisherman’s, farmers, surfers, the population of Teahupoo, younger and older people… we are against this new tower. We want them to use the normal judging tower that WSL uses every year. It works perfectly fine and they need to adapt to our environment and listen to what us locals say.”
Ver esta publicação no Instagram
A petition has been set up and you can sign it HERE.
An innocent question to finish: Instead of building a new tower, why not donate the $5 million to an ecologic non-profit group or charity?
