Paris 2024 Olympics event is taking place 16,000km away from French capital

The Paris Olympics of 2024 have finally arrived - although not all of the tournament's events will be taking place in the French capital. While track and field, gymnastics, martial arts and ball game events can take place in the heart of France, there are other Olympic sports which the country cannot facilitate.

And one such sport which will be held a whopping 16,000km from Paris this year comes in the form of surfing. Surfing only made its debut as an official Olympic Games competition in the 2020 Summer Olympics of Tokyo, Japan - which were held in 2021 due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

While the contest site for the Tokyo Olympic Games of 2021 would be announced as Tsurigasaki Beach, around 64km outside of the Japanese capital in Ichinomiya, this year's event will be much farther from its hosting city. But why is the event taking place so far away? Here The Express explains.

Four sites across France reportedly applied for hosting rights for surfing for the 2024 Olympics, in Biarritz, Lacanau, Les Landes and La Torche - as well as Teahupo’o - a small village on the southeastern coast of Tahiti, French Polynesia. And while it would have made sense to keep the games strictly in France, Teahupo'o ultimately won the bid thanks to widespread support from its surfing community.

It was also reportedly selected due to a lack of waves across Europe in the summertime, with International Surfing Association (ISA) President, Fernando Aguerre, explaining to TYC Sports: "It was not easy, it has been a long time, but the IOC [International Olympic Committee] understood that in these weeks, in France, there was a great chance that there would be no waves and that the change would not only allow us to continue in France but also go to the best course where a tournament of this importance could be held. It really will be a dream come true."

Speaking of the prestige of the waves in Teahupo'o, Aguerre said: "It has a coral reef, one and a half metres below the water, in the shape of a ring, where impressive tubes are produced. Unlike other breaks, where surfers go down the wave and then perform different manoeuvres for 10/15 seconds to get the best scores, in Teahupo'o it is something else, faster and more radical.

"You go down the vertical wave almost in the air, you turn and get into the tube and then try to get out, trying not to get thrown by the foam ball that forms when the wave is breaking. The size of the wave is measured, how difficult the descent is, how deep you were in the tube and the time you stayed inside."

He added: "It is one of the most complex waves in the world and in this tournament there will be the best surfers on the planet, 24 women and 24 men, from 21 countries and five continents. We expect tremendous competition, in the best possible place."

It's not the first time that an Olympic Games has been split across two continents either. The 1956 Summer Olympic Games were held in Melbourne, Australia, but due to strict equine quarantining at the time, the equestrian events were held around 15,500km away in Stockholm, Sweden.