To upset the codes by proposing, as Tony Estanguet likes to repeat, “incredible sites” or to remain faithful to the Olympic spirit which wants the Games to take place in an area sufficiently concentrated to allow the athletes to rub shoulders? The dilemma is not easy for the actors of Paris 2024, to bring to look at the site to host the surfing events.
Five cities – Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), La Torche (Finistère), Lacanau (Gironde), the Hossegor-Capbreton-Seignosse trio (Landes) and Tahiti (French Polynesia) – are candidates and the hearts of the organizers lean towards this island, quite heavenly. The idea had also been put forward within the organization committee (Cojo) itself very long months ago, initially in the form of a joke. She finally got more than serious.
No room for error
Organizing an event more than 15,000 km from the host city, with the delay that goes with it, may seem crazy. The State saw in it an opportunity to associate an overseas territory with the Olympic adventure, the Cojo a possibility of shaking up the old Olympic machine and offering an incomparable postcard. After the study of the files, the sporting advantage is undeniable: Tahiti is all-risk insurance with waves insured at 75%, even 100%… against 25% for the four other candidate cities.
In Cojo language, this is translated as “in Biarritz or Lacanau, the surfing events will have 3 out of 4 chances of being canceled”. An unthinkable scenario for a discipline which is entering the Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer, on a site which promises to be catastrophic in terms of waves (unless a typhoon passes by). In 2024, Paris will not have the right to make mistakes, otherwise surfing will be condemned to be removed from the Olympic programme. The lobbying of the international surfing association is therefore certain. Much more than that of elected officials.
The boss of the Games not a fan of the concept
Of course, the candidate cities regularly remember Tony Estanguet in good memory. But the Ile-de-France city councilors who sit on the administration committee, rather united when it comes, for example, to defending the hill of Élancourt in the Yvelines against Chamonix to host mountain biking events – will not step up to support Lacanau , Biarritz or Hossegor facing Tahiti. In other words, they will agree with the opinion of the sports management of Paris 2024 which before submitting its decision to the vote (a priori on December 12) will however have to overcome an obstacle, and not the least: convince Thomas Bach.
The boss of the Games, not a fan of the concept, is attached to “the atmosphere of the Games” and therefore to a certain compactness. The file will be presented this Wednesday to the IOC Executive Board. If Thomas Bach does not wince, we no longer see what will prevent surfing from expatriating itself to Tahiti, in what the surfer Cannelle Bulard calls “the incredible wave factory”.