Just a couple of months after one of the better CT events in recent years, the best surfers in the world will return to Teahupo’o, this time with a different reward at the end of the road. A pair of Gold, Silver and Bronze Medals are up for grabs, with three of the 24 surfers on both the men’s and women’s side of the draw set to join what is a very exclusive club of Olympic surfing medallists. Most of the big names you would expect will be there, but they will be joined by a host of competitors who qualified through various methods outside of the WSL. Those WSL surfers will headline the main list of contenders as they did last time around, though there were a couple of surprise members of the podium on the women’s side back then when South Africa’s Bianca Buitendag won Silver and Japan’s Amuro Tsuzui won Bronze – Gold Medalist Carissa Moore was a little less of a surprise.. Below, we take a look at who are the best chances to finish up on the podium with a medal around their neck at the second edition of Olympic surfing.
The Favourites
As far as specialists go in surfing, Vahine Fierro is about as specialised as can be, and couldn’t have asked for a better place to try to secure an Olympic Gold Medal. Hailing from the small island of Huahine just a couple of hundred kilometres from Tahiti, Fierro has never been a member of the Championship Tour, but she might just be the best female surfer at Teahupo’o in the world. In the past three years she has received a wildcard to the Tahiti Pro – the only event she’s competed in on the CT in that time – and in that time she has finished 3rd, 3rd, and this year, 1st. She was absolutely dominant in that win, scoring at least 15.13 in every heat and averaging 16.03 en route to the victory. A Gold Medal would round out an extraordinary couple of months for the 24-year-old – a CT victory and a win at the Olympics, and all that for someone who doesn’t even surf competitively all that often. Fierro will be well supported at the event, competing for the host nation, and based on her performance at the Tahiti Pro earlier this year she is probably the woman to beat.
One of the few women who can go close to matching Fierro’s record at Teahupo’o since it joined the women’s tour is reigning world champion Caroline Marks, In those three years finishing 5th, 1st and this year 3rd. But it has taken a little while for scores to reach what we’re accustomed to on the tour – unsurprising given the women weren’t previously competing at the break – and Marks has benefited a lot from the inability of many of her competitors to put together much of a score. In those three years her highest heat average is 8.93, which came when she won. Even when she finished 3rd, Marks put together a solid 12.67 in the Opening Round heat, then just an 8.16 to win the quarterfinals before she lost with a 3.67 in the semis. She has certainly been better than many of her competitors and she will no doubt continue to improve as she surfs more, but she is not nearly as comfortable as Fierro on this wave. Marks is expected to do well at the Olympics and she very may well, but it would be a surprise to see her scoring better than the likes of Fierro.
Catilin Simmers, in her short career, has made it abundantly clear that she is not one to shy away from a challenge, and that has been evident in her performances in these kinds of waves so far. She hasn’t yet won at Teahupo’o but she did start this season with a win at Pipeline, and has showed her wares in Tahiti particularly when she finished 2nd last year. In that second, she didn’t put together particularly big scores in three out of her four heats, but when the waves came she showed what she can do, knocking off Fierro 15.73-12.34. This year she was knocked out in the Elimination Round, but she was unlucky – she finished 2nd to Fierro in the Opening Round despite scoring 14.17, before losing by just 0.3 points in the Elimination Round. She will go very close to winning her inaugural world title this year, and could easily find herself in the medals in Tahiti too.
The Next Tier
Brisa Hennessy is in the midst of the best year of her career, having notched up semi-final appearances in five of the seven events that she has competed in. She has won just one of those semis, that coming at the Tahiti Pro a couple of months ago when she lost to Fierro in the final. Hennessy handled the conditions at the pumping reef break pretty well, scoring 12.66 in the quarterfinals, 13.57 in the semis, and a losing 12.00 in the final. That was just her second time competing in the Tahiti Pro after she missed out on qualifying for it in 2023, and the year prior she also finished runner-up. She didn’t surf as well then as she did this year, but was still winning her heats pretty easily – and as with most of her competitors, it comes as no great surprise that with a little bit of experience at the break she performed better. With two second-place finishes from two appearances at the wave she is clearly an excellent chance of getting in the medals. Winning has proven elusive for her this year, but if she can make her way through to the semis, like she has most events on the CT this season, then she is obviously more than capable of going all the way.
This year was the best women’s edition of the Tahiti Pro to date by some margin, and Tatiana Weston-Webb was one of those seemingly able to conquer the wave and put together some really big scores. She started off with a 10.34-point heat in the Opening Round, which she won, before scoring 14.83 in a high-scoring quarterfinal against Tyler Wright and then going very close to beating Fierro, losing their semi 17.70-16.06. That 3rd place followed on from a couple of other decent results at the wave over the previous couple of years, when she notched up a 3rd and a 5th – albeit not with the same sort of scores she managed this year. The goofy-footer will be Brazil’s best hope on the women’s side of the draw, and with Medina likely to go very close on the men’s side she will potentially be looking to make it two medals – and maybe two Golds – for Brazil. Weston-Webb has been coming into some good form on the Championship Tour of late, picking up two 3rd place finishes and a 5th in her last three events, and if she can bring that form with her to Tahiti then she is good enough to win a medal.
Admittedly Carissa Moore is a little out of competitive practice, having taken the year away from the tour after consecutive years of finishing on top of the world rankings only to lose the WSL Finals and miss out on a world title, but write off the five-time world champ at your own peril. She’s been the best in the business for years and was again last year, and when she jumped back in for the Tahiti Pro a couple of months ago – just her second event of the year – she was pretty solid, and was unfortunate to be knocked out in the quarterfinals after a couple of decent scores. She has now finished 5th at the Tahiti Pro in each of the past three years, but unexpectedly she immediately took to the wave in 2022 a lot better than many of her fellow competitors. Moore is really good in waves of consequence and Teahupo’o is about as consequential as it gets, so even having not competed a lot this year, it would be no surprise to see her adding another medal to the tally of the United States.
The Roughie
Speaking of people who aren’t afraid of waves of consequence, Tyler Wright is another who has taken a liking to Teahupo’o and has performed very well at the other heaving, barrelling left-handed reef break on tour in Pipeline. She finished 9th here in 2022, but made it to the semis last year and then finished 5th this year. But the latter of those was actually her best performance yet at the break; after a poor Opening Round heat, she scored 14.60 to beat Johanne Defay in the Elimination Round, and then was knocked out in a heat in which she scored 13.76 against Tatiana Weston-Webb. Wright has had a little bit of a frustrating year and is certainly not surfing at the level she has in the past, but she is still a very dangerous competitor, particularly on a wave like this. A two-time world champion, Wright has had a decorated professional career, and at the age of 30 an Olympic medal would be a worthy addition to her trophy cabinet.
Our Prediction
There are a couple of standouts to me out of the above names. Caitlin Simmers is one of them, having shown a penchant for this wave – along with most waves in the world – in her short career. But it is impossible to go past Vahine Fierro at her home break. She might not be at the level of many others in the field on most waves in the world, but she doesn’t need to be. She knows this wave like the back of her hand and surfs it as well as anyone, as she showed just a couple or months ago when she won the Tahiti Pro. Having finished 3rd, 3rd and 1st in her three appearance at that contest, it seems likely to be very hard to keep her off the podium. In what would round out an incredible couple of months, she can add a home Gold Medal to her Tahiti Pro trophy at the 2024 Olympics.