2023-06-06 15:13:30
Reaffirm its will to organize the surfing events of the 2024 Olympic Games, while ensuring guarantees. Visiting Paris this week, the president of Polynesia Moetai Brotherson, confirmed that Tahiti would welcome surfing, as long as its environmental requirements and acceptance by Polynesians are met.
“We have a certain number of requirements in relation to the holding of these events, which we absolutely want to take place here. The Games will take place in Tahiti but my role is to ensure that they take place as well as possible, both from the perspective of the Olympic Games Committee but above all from that of Polynesia and the Polynesians”, indicated Moetai Brotherson to AFP.
“If it’s to leave nothing to young Polynesians, we will have missed the boat”
Its requirements are “environmental” but also involve “social acceptability”, he said. “This raises the question of the legacy: what will remain after these ten days of ordeal? If it’s to leave structures that we won’t know what to do with, it’s not worth it. If it is to leave nothing to young Polynesians who want to surf or even move towards professional surfing, we will also have missed the boat,” he insisted.
The President of Polynesia, elected on May 12 and in favor of a smooth transition to independence, said he was “reassured” after his meetings with the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, and the president of the organizing committee. of the Games, Tony Estanguet, this week “because they reiterated that there were specifications which expressed generic needs but that, in the implementation of the solutions, the ball was in our court”.
Already before the elections, Moetai Brotherson had replied “a bit amused” to the concerns of the organizers that “it was perhaps more important for the separatists than for the separatists that these Games take place in Tahiti, where surfing was born. For us, it’s a story of culture, history, and, somewhere, honor,” he explains.
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