The iconic Teahupo’o wave in Tahiti will host surfing competitions during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where a star-studded field of competitors will compete for gold.
Olympic champion Carissa Moore, who may be competing in her final Games, is back to try to defend her title, and rising skaters Caity Simmers and Molly Picklum will also be captivating to watch. The current world champion Caroline Marks is motivated to improve on her fourth-place result from Tokyo, and her recent results indicate that she will be able to accomplish so.
The champion of Tokyo 2020, Italo Ferreira, will not be competing, but Brazil will send a strong team that includes João Chianca, Gabriel Medina, and Filipe Toledo. They will face fierce competition, though, as the top-ranked athletes from the United States and Australia will also be traveling to Tahiti to compete on the wave known as “The End of the Road.”
In just over a month, on July 27, the surfing tournament will begin, and it promises to be an unforgettable event. Watch these three women and three men in action.
Round one heats for surfing at Paris 2024 announced
Athletes’ ability to compete in the Paris Games rests on their National Olympic Committee (NOC) choosing them to represent their delegation in Paris 2024. NOCs hold the only authority for representing their respective nations at the Olympic Games.
Brazil’s Gabriel Medina
Gabriel Medina finished fourth in Tokyo, just missing the podium, but less than two months later, he was at the top of the world rankings.
The surfer has made it quite clear what he is aiming for as he prepares for his second Olympic Games, saying to Olympics.com, “I have no secrets about this.” My goal is to win an Olympic medal, and I will stop at nothing to do that. Following his victory in the 2024 ISA World Surfing Games and acquisition of a third Olympic quota for the Brazilian men’s team, he released a statement.
France’s Jean-de Fay
French surfer Johanne Defay, who grew up in the treacherous waters of Reunion Island, is expected to be a hometown favorite in Paris in 2024.
Defay is scheduled to compete in her first Olympic Games in Paris after placing third in the 2024 ISA World Surfing Games in Puerto Rico. She is regarded as a humble athlete who, at the age of 19, lost her main sponsor and resorted to crowdsourcing to support her goals. Her new goal is to place first on the podium in Paris in 2024.
USA – JOHN JOHN FLORENCE
Hawaii’s two-time world champion surfer John John Florence is among the most well-known (and beloved) surfers gearing up to participate in Paris in 2024.
Florence, one of the most accomplished surfers of his time, grew up with the notorious Pipeline wave in his backyard. He tied for ninth place in Tokyo 2020, but he’s going back for his second Games in the hopes of making the podium.
Costa Rica – BRISA HENNESSY
In their history, Costa Rica has only ever taken home one gold medal at the Olympics. But at Paris 2024, Brisa Hennessy plans to try to treble that figure.
When surfing debuted at the Olympics in Tokyo 2020, Hennesy was the only competitor from Costa Rica and the reigning champion of the ISA World Surfing Games. The 24-year-old was raised off the land and surrounded by the ocean and jungle for the first eight years of her life in Costa Rica, where she lived without electricity. It was the beginning of her love for surfing. But when she relocated to Hawaii when she was eight years old, her love for the sport took off and her aspirations to become a top-tier competition surfer started to materialize. Following a tie for fifth place finish in
Robertson, Jack – Australia
Watch out for Australia’s Jack Robinson, who is a surfer competing in Tahiti for the Olympics.
Robinson, who is regarded as one of the modern era’s top barrel surfers, won the Australian Surfing Awards’ Surfer of the Year title in 2020 and 2021. Robinson stated in an interview that it was precisely when “I did a reverse, spun around and did a full 360 and went, ‘Oh, that was pretty good!'” that he realized surfing could be a vocation at the age of seven.
Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb
Tatiana Weston-Webb, the two-time ISA World Surfing Games winner, is getting ready to compete in her second Olympics.
With her win in the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile—where forecasts predicted triple-overhead waves for the competition—Weston-Webb fulfilled her Olympic quota.
Is she able to convert Pan American gold into Olympic medals? There is just one month left for the world to wait to find out.
