23 Images From an Insane Day of Olympic Surfing at Teahupo’o

Teahupo’o is giving us one helluva season, isn’t it? Kauli Vaast caught arguably the best wave of his life there just this month. In May, the Championship Tour hosted one of the best contests in recent memory at the End of the Road. The ladies of the CT put on a magical show there, one-upping the historic performance(s) from January at the Pipe Pro.

And then there was Monday, which if you’ve been watching or reading forecasts for the past few weeks you’ll know wasn’t supposed to happen. At least it wasn’t supposed to be that good, that’s for sure. Monday would have been a heavy favorite for lay day number one during the Olympic competition window, not because there wouldn’t be waves but because there would be wind. A lot of it blowing strong in all the wrong directions.

But instead of waking up to victory at sea, competitors woke up and made a mad dash for their step ups.

“When local Kauli Vaast says that this morning’s Teahupo’o was ‘perfect,’ it carries extra weight. You can’t argue with that,” Evan Quarnstrom pointed out, who’s been on the ground in Tahiti covering the Games for The Inertia. 

Add Monday to the list in a season that will go down in history as all-time. Not simply because this was the year the Olympics came to town but because the wave is continuously stepping to the occasion and putting on the best show(s). Gabriel Medina went viral for a claim that would be difficult for even the saltiest of Gabs haters to scoff at. Ramzi Boukhiam and Jo?o Chianca threw haymakers at one another to the point that Chianca was able to discard two excellent scores in his final heat total (he caught that many good waves). In fact, Boukhiam’s 17.80 heat total would have been good enough to beat the entire field Monday with the exception of Joan Duru and his incredible performance against Alan Cleland in heat four, and, of course, Chianca.

And now we just sit and wait for one last day of competition. Most expect that next opportunity to come at the very end of the competition window, which means we could be waiting for a week before we get to see Olympic surfing at Teahupo’o again. Whatever the call is, it’s going to take a lot to top Monday.

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