It was a few days in advance and far from the controversy it aroused last fall that the new judges' tower emerged from the ground, or rather from the sea, facing the Teahupoo reef in Tahiti. In less than five months, the site will host the surfing events of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, some 15,000 km from the rest of the competitions organized in mainland France.
Erected on its first two floors on March 17, according to the local channel Polynésie la 1ère, the main structure of the tower is now completed, as shown in the images of Australian photographer Tim McKenna, a regular at the site.
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The Paris 2024 teams and jury will thus be installed on three levels in this aluminum building, around thirty meters from the wave where the French Johanne Defay, Vahine Fierro, Joan Duru and Kauli Vaast, officially selected for the test since Friday March 29. The old wooden structure, which was used during the Surfing World Cup circuit in Teahupoo, was not approved for this level of competition.
On site, the authorities say they are “satisfied” with the success of the work, completed a little ahead of schedule and which took into consideration the arguments put forward by defenders of the environmental cause. At the beginning of December, during technical tests, a barge intended for the installation of the resized aluminum tower had broken coral. The Polynesian government then had to suspend work.
“Everything has been revised downwards,” explains Christian Wang Sang, in charge of the file within the Tahitian Ministry of Youth and Sports, to local radio station “Radio 1”. We worked with these new elements to guarantee delivery of the tower on time. »
Fourteen impacts on the coral during the work
After long weeks of heated protests from local environmental protection associations, work was able to begin at the beginning of March. “The supervision of the construction site by the teams who have been building the tower for 20 years, the opening of the information kiosk and local consultation on
environmental and heritage
issues
have favored a return to calm,” was welcomed at the time. Barbara Martins Nio, manager of the Tahiti site for Cojo.
“We gave up on the matter,” regretted Cindy Otsenasek, president of the Vai Ara o Teahupoo association, the most mobilized against the work. She believed she had done “everything possible within the limits of legality”.
Pascal Luciani, local referent for Paris 2024, assured that there had “been fourteen impacts on the coral”, “not much” according to him. “Nature will always reclaim its rights, even without coral cuttings,” added Moana David, responsible for the installation of the old wooden tower for years.
Although the first phase was completed around two weeks in advance, the work is not yet finished. “Two major interventions remain on the program. The cable which will connect the earth to the tower and the layout of the tower itself, details Christian Wang Sang. We're talking about partitions, we're talking about the air-conditioned room for the servers, the installation of the furniture... And it also remains to carry out the reception of the tower with the control bodies. »
The judges' tower will have the opportunity to be tested two months before the Olympic events: the Teahupoo wave hosts the Tahiti Pro from May 22 to 31, a stage of the World Surf League, the professional surfing circuit. The organizers of the competition should, in view of the calendar, take possession of the premises a few days before the start of the events as initially hoped.