As an open water swimmer, I love watching surfing. The skills and courage of big-wave surfers is obvious: balance, strength, speed, timing, patience, and an audacious, almost fearless, spirit. Surfers have to read the ocean in ways that are more profound and significantly more risk-taking than what is required by open water swimmers.
While the marathon swimmers will compete in the Seine on August 8th (women) and 9th (men), the surfing community will gather in the well-known – and treacherous – surfing zone in Teahupo’o, Tahiti. The top 48 surfers will competition takes over a 4-day period sometime during a 10-day period between July 27th and August 5th located on the lush mountainous southwestern coast of Tahiti in French Polynesia.
Why is Teahupo’o Different
Previous Olympic 10K Marathon Swims have been held in these locations – all quite enjoyably swimmable by a vast majority of open water swimmers of all ages and all abilities:
- 2008: Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park rowing basin outside Beijing
- 2012: Serpentine, a man-made lake in Hyde Park in the center of London
- 2016: Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro
- 2020: Odaiba Marine Park in Tokyo Bay
- 2024: Seine in Paris
- 2028: Within the Long Beach breakwater in Los Angeles
But Teahupo’o is different, much much different.
Can surfers of beginning or moderate skill levels take on Teahupo’o? No way, no ho. Not unless they want to become seriously injured. Wipeouts are hard to watch because of the dangers of the shallow reef and volume of the water breaking so furiously and suddenly. Teahupo’o is one of the world’s iconic surfing locations, a unique body of water reserved for only the very best and most experienced.
Surfing is be one of the major, breakout competitions at the Paris Olympics, held in Tahiti.
Little-known Fact
It a little known fact in the open water swimming community is that the father of Carissa Moore, the defending Olympic surfing champion, is Christopher Moore, an experienced ocean swimmer from Honolulu, former NCAA pool swimmer, a 2-time winner (and 6-time podium finisher) at the Waikiki Roughwater Swim (1987 and 1990), winner of the 7 km Hawaiian Christmas Looong Distance Invitational Rough-H2O Swim, and former race director for the North Shore Swim Series that includes the North Shore Challenge, Chuns-to-Waimea, Waimea Bay Swim and the Raging Isle Sprint on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii throughout the summer months.
Moore posted on her Instagram @rissmoore10, “Pretty cool to be a part of the Olympic experience again, especially here at Teahupo’o, Tahiti. The Games brings this special feeling of togetherness. Yes it’s a competition but it truly feels like a celebration. A celebration of passion, hard work, dedication and dreams. Yes we are here to do our best and hopefully win a medal but it kinda feels like we already won. Just being here, making it to this moment, has taken tremendous effort and sacrifice by every athlete. Congratulations to all the Olympic Surfers of Paris 2024! Let’s put on a great show for the world to see.”
Olympic Surfers
What is also exciting is that the world’s best surfers go head-to-head with each other in 8 different heats – and the best move on to the additional rounds and Olympic final. It is definitely one of the most-anticipated competitions at the Paris Olympics – all wrapped in and around the power of Mother Nature.
Surfing Judging
During the head-to-head heats, five judges score each ride on a scale from 1 to 10 based on speed, maneuvers, and degree of difficulty. LIke other Olympic sports, the highest and lowest scores are tossed out and the score is the average of the three remaining scores. The surfers can catch as many waves as they want.
There are six rounds with round 1 consisting of 8 heats of 3 surfers each. The first three rounds are followed by the quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals.
Surfing Terms
- Ankle Slappers or Busters: small waves
- Back down: to decide not to take off on a wave
- Bail out: to get away from, jump off, or dive off the surfboard just before a potential wipe out
- Barrel: a hollow channel formed inside a good wave when it breaks and curls over
- Blown out: conditions that are created when the winds blow so hard and chop up the surf to render it difficult to ride
- Breaker: a wave that breaks on the way to the shoreline or beach
- Crest: top portion of a wave
- Cruncher: hard-breaking wave that quickly folds over and is almost impossible to ride
- Cut out or pull out: to pull out of a wave before attempting to surf it
- Dolphin pop: an underwater takeoff where a body surfer dives under the surface of the water as the wave prepares to break, does dolphin (butterfly) kick and then pops out on the face of the wave like a dolphin to perfectly catch the wave
- Eat it or wipe out or nailed: to miss catching the wave and get thrown by or off the wave
- Face: the unbroken wall, surface, or nearly vertical front of a wave
- Glassy: smooth water surface conditions caused by absence of winds
- Outside break: area farthest from shore where the waves are breaking
- Over the falls: to wipe out, or to get dragged over as the wave breaks
- Pounder: a hard-breaking wave
- Set: a group of waves
- Shape: the configuration, or form, of a wave
- Shore break: waves break very close to the beach
- Soup: foamy part of the broken wave; the white water after the wave breaks
- Stoked: to be happy, excited, or content
- Swells: unbroken waves moving in groups of similar height and frequency
- Takeoff: the start of a ride on a wave by a surfer or body surfer
- Teapuho’o: loosely translates to English as ‘to sever the head’ or ‘place of skulls’ and is commonly included in the World’s Top 10 Deadliest Waves and is referred to as the heaviest wave in the world
- Tube: the hollow portion of a wave formed when the crest spills over and makes a tunnel or hollow space in front of the face of the wave
Female Surfers of Today and Female Marathon Swimmers of Yesteryear
Carissa Moore is part of a generation of female surfers who have and are changing the face of surfing. The Honolulu native is a world surfing professional champion, became the first woman to receive a wildcard entry into the men’s Triple Crown of Surfing, and won the 2020 Tokyo Olympics surfing gold medal. She has emerged as one of surfing leading spokeswomen and talents.
Heavily sponsored, Moore has graced surfing magazine covers and combines the lifestyle of a global-trotting surfer and seriously dedicated athlete with world-class skills.
But there is still inequality between the prize money and conditions that men and women often face on the professional surfing circuit. “I make my living off of my sponsorship deals, not the prize money,” she explained to The Red Bulletin a few years ago. “I think the women should be respected and rewarded for what they do.” She remains bold and fearless which is exactly why she was invited to the men-only Triple Crown of Surfing.
“The guys definitely do charge bigger waves and they do bigger airs and stuff, but the girls are so close to getting to where the guys are. [But] I really do care for the state of women’s surfing. I want to see surfing for women to go so much further than just me. When I’m done, I’d like to leave behind a great legacy.”
Moore’s frustrations and goals sound unsurprisingly like other female professionals in other sports: Billie Jean King in tennis, Dara Torres in pool swimming, and Annette Kellerman and Shelley Taylor-Smith in open water swimming.
These women also faced a number of inequalities, most significantly competitive opportunities and prize money.
Taylor-Smith did something about it. She raced and went head-to-head with the top professional marathon swimming men in the world, very much like Greta Andersen and Judith van Berkel-de Njis before her. Taylor-Smith and other women of her era including Karen Burton had to line up at the start of professional marathon races and fight for every single dollar of prize money against men. Women were not given separate cash prizes during and before her era; the pot of money was fixed and it was up to both men and women to swim faster to get the larger prizes.
“Men made me rise to the occasion,” explained Taylor-Smith. “They forced me to train harder and swim faster. I owe a lot of my success to my male competitors.”
But when Taylor-Smith took the overall top prize for the 1991 International Marathon Swimming Association professional circuit and beat all the top men en route, the system changed. Suddenly, the 1992 season was time for separate cash prizes to be offered. The shift in the mindset of the professional marathon swimming world was cataclysmic. It would never be the same. Women would compete for a cash pot equal to that of men – and they would not be competing against each other.
“I have won many races around the world, but I think this change in prize money and the recognition given to women marathon swimmers is my greatest legacy,” said Taylor-Smith with a smile.
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