The world’s top surfers will be out to claim a slice of Olympic history when they gather in Teahupo’o later this month amid surfing’s second inclusion in the global event. But the 24 women surfers set to take on the famed break in Tahiti as part of the Paris Games will be following in the footsteps of oft forgotten female trailblazers who have already attempted – and occasionally succeeded – to conquer its fierce and heavy waves.
When the International Olympic Committee confirmed in 2020 that the Paris Games surfing events would not be held in France, but instead at Teahupo’o on the island territory of Tahiti, the reaction was mixed. This wave is considered so dangerous that, at the time, there had not been a women’s event held at the site since 2006.
The IOC announcement prompted the World Surf League to reestablish a Women’s Championship Tour event at the site 16 years after it had been scrapped. The women’s tour returned in 2022 but it was the event held in May this year that captured attention across the globe with some of the best women’s surfing ever seen in competition.
In the excitement that followed, the WSL claimed the event had seen a “women’s first perfect 10 at Teahupo’o”, in reference to Brazilian surfer Tatiana Weston-Webb’s mind-boggling barrel riding. This was subsequently called into question when Hawaiian big wave surfer and former world tour competitor Keala Kennelly reminded the surfing world that the first perfect 10 by a woman at Teahupo’o was actually her achievement back in 2001.
Weston-Webb’s perfect 10 wasn’t even the second. Australian surfer and 2005 world champion Chelsea Hedges also scored a perfect 10 at the wave the same year the event was cancelled, Kennelly said in a video posted to Instagram. Reporting from the time of these events verifies Kennelly’s claims, and the WSL website now refers to Weston-Webb’s perfect 10 as “the first since the women’s event’s return at the Tahiti Pro”. The WSL did not respond to a request for comment on the dispute.
Kennelly isn’t alone in calling out that some of the achievements from past eras seem to be forgotten as the hype around women’s surfing soars. The 1993 world champion Pauline Menczer has echoed the sentiment saying, “there are heaps of comments now about how the girls are charging, but the girls were charging back then as well, they just didn’t have cameras on them.”
When the WSL, then called the ASP, cancelled the women’s event at Teahupo’o, it was because they deemed the break too dangerous for women. The decision to cancel the event was reportedly made without consultation and has drawn criticism over the years since. Layne Beachley, who was the surfers’ representative at the time, refuted claims that the women had wanted to hit the brakes on the event.
“I report to the ASP board about what the girls wanted and we definitely wanted to keep going back,” Beachley said in 2006. “It’s of huge importance. It shows the women have the depth, the ability and the courage to confront the challenge.”
Cancellation of the world tour event didn’t spell the end of women surfing the wave. In 2015 the Hawaiian world champion longboarder Kelia Moniz famously attempted to surf the heavy wave on a longboard – a challenge far greater than surfing it on a shortboard. In 2016 Kennelly won the WSL XXL Big Wave Awards Barrel of the Year at Teahupo’o, an award with no gender criteria. Kennelly was the first and only woman to have achieved this feat, and was also the first woman to tow surf the wave when pulled in by a jet ski in 2005.
In 2019, before the Olympic announcement, Weston-Webb renewed calls for the women’s competition to return. “I think it would be good for this generation of female surfers to start surfing heavier waves, to continuously feel more comfortable and know that we can surf waves like this,” she told Stab after footage came out of her charging the monster wave outside of competition.
But it took an Olympic announcement for the WSL to bring the women’s surfing competition back to Tahiti. With just two years of competition to prepare, the women’s field has been forced to rapidly learn what people have spent decades mastering. In fact, many of the women in the Olympic field will never have even surfed a heat at Teahupo’o before they paddle out with medal hopes on the line. The qualification format means some surfers who have earned a spot at the Olympics are not on the World Championship Tour and have qualified through the amateur World Surfing Games.
Local knowledge of the break, like that of Vahine Fierro who is not on the World Championship Tour but won the recent Tahiti event as a wildcard, and who has qualified for the Olympics with the French team, carry a serious advantage. Getting to know the shape of the reef, which waves to paddle into as they march in from the horizon and draw up over the coral ledge, is something that comes with time spent surfing the location.
Surfing is a unique sport in that sense – it is like walking out for a tennis match where the court is never the same and you have to adjust your game as it changes, and if you fail, you could die. One would think the ability to do this has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with opportunity and experience.
