Surfers were highlighted during NBC’s broadcast of the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony, in part because of their unique position at these Games.
While other athletes were being drenched in Paris on Friday night, the surfers were about 10 thousand miles away on a beach on the Pacific island of Tahiti.
So why Tahiti? The island is part of French Polynesia, one of the outposts controlled by France for many decades.
France, with it’s Atlantic Ocean coast that stretches for hundreds of miles, boasts plenty of good surfing spots, some of the best in Europe.
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Yet organizers chose Tahiti — with one of the great waves in the world — to host the surfing competition at these Olympics because of the special opportunity it presents for the surfers. The move was, according to the IOC, widely supported by surfers.
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As Jack Dolan wrote for the Los Angeles Times, it also brings some potentially epic moments for viewers, and the real risk of something much worst.
“Anyone who times their ride wrong, takes off in anything but the perfect spot or fails to paddle hard enough to match the speed of the wave, runs the risk of getting pounded into the coral reef below by all that rushing water,” Dolan wrote. “Imagine being shoved across a cheese grater by a steam roller.”
No thank you.
For the surfers, it has to be quite a rush. And so much of the thrill-seeking sport of elite surfing is part that: a rush.
There are at least two out LGBTQ athletes who will be competing for surfing gold in Tahiti.
Australian star Tyler Wright, who’s married to her wife, is one of those out athletes who has a shot at a medal. South Africa’s Sarah Baum, who just recently married her wife, is the other.
Wright has talked publicly about the double standard she has observed between male athletes, who seem to be universally celebrated for their strength and athleticism, and female athletes she thinks are pushed into more femininity.
“I’m built like an athlete, I’m not straight, I don’t have blonde hair,” Wright previously said. “And while men were allowed to go out and be athletes — and get paid for doing it — a lot of women weren’t.”
She’s been posting regularly from Tahiti.
It’s only the second time that surfing will be included at a Summer Olympics.
