Paris 2024 Olympic Games: Lacanau and La Torche ready to replace Tahiti for surfing if necessary

The sites of Lacanau (Gironde) and La Torche (Finistère), former candidates for hosting the surfing events of the 2024 Olympic Games, declared this Wednesday that they were prepared to host the event in the event that it could not take place. hold in Tahiti. “We continued to work quietly, and today, if we are called upon, we will of course be happy to host the Olympic surfing events,” Laurent Peyrondet, the mayor of the city, told AFP. commune of Lacanau (Gironde). “Since last summer there have been a few press articles reporting difficulties (…) in particular difficulties in intervening on the site. We therefore remained on standby,” he explained.

The city hosts a competition every year organized by the World Surf League (WSL) – the company which manages the professional circuit – and had applied to organize the Olympic surfing events, allocated in 2020 to the Teahupo’o site in Tahiti. . Three other territories in France, Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), La Torche (Finistère) and Landes (Hossegor, Capbreton and Seignosse) had also applied.

“If we are asked, we won’t say no,” Stéphane Le Doaré, mayor of Pont-L’Abbé and president of the community of communes of Pays Bigouden Sud, in charge of the La Torche site, told AFP on Wednesday. . “For the moment, we have not been asked but we are used to hosting competitions and installing temporary infrastructures (…) We have average waves in summer but surfable by everyone,” he said. -he thinks. “We need to know quickly, before the end of the year. Because that requires a minimum of management and organization,” warned the mayor.