Five venues make official bids to host the Paris 2024 Olympic Games surfing competitions

16 July 2019 - Paris

At midnight yesterday, Paris 2024 closed its call for applications for venues wishing to host the surfing competitions at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

The following five venues (listed in alphabetical order) have officially applied:

--Biarritz

--Community of municipalities of Le Pays Bigouden Sud (La Torche)

--Department of Les Landes (Hossegor, Capbreton and Seignosse)

--Lacanau – Bordeaux Metropole

--French Polynesia

Natural venues for surfing competitions

The choice of the surfing venue should tie in with Paris 2024’s vision of a sustainable and responsible Games and will not involve the construction of a permanent venue. Paris 2024 will choose a venue offering natural waves, as France boasts a number of well-known surfing spots on its Atlantic coast and in its overseas territories.

Paris 2024 will select a venue that offers athletes ideal conditions in which to compete and all necessary related services. The key criteria identified by Paris 2024 will include the venue’s experience in hosting surfing competitions, weather conditions, the quality of the body of water, and facilities for hosting athletes and spectators. The chosen venue should also propose a public celebration of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, contribute to the development of surfing, and manage the environmental impact involved in hosting the competitions.

What comes next?

Paris 2024 will now visit the five candidate venues over the summer, when weather and sea conditions are likely to be similar to those the athletes will encounter in summer 2024. The sites will then have until 30 September 2019 to submit a complete application file.

The surfing competitions venue should be named in the first half of 2020, subject to the IOC giving its final approval, in December 2020, to surfing’s inclusion as a new sport on the Paris 2024 Games programme.

Should surfing be added to the programme, it will comprise both a women’s shortboard and a men’s shortboard event, each contested by 24 athletes. This equal split between genders will apply to all four additional sports proposed by Paris 2024 (breaking, sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing) and approved by the IOC Session on 25 June.

Paris 2024 media contacts:

Alexandre VILLEGER – +33 7 50 97 37 32 – avilleger@paris2024.org

Christophe PROUST – +33 6 21 60 32 69 – cproust@paris2024.org

Mathilde RENOIR – +33 6 10 86 57 96 – mrenoir@paris2024.org

Anne-Solène ROUDEL – +33 6 73 07 87 61 – asroudel@paris2024.org

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Paris 2024

The Organising Committee for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games (Paris 2024) has the task of planning for, organising, financing and delivering the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris in 2024 in accordance with the host city contract signed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF) and the City of Paris.

The Olympic and Paralympic Games are the first sports event in the world with a unique media impact, bringing together some 15,000 athletes (10,500 Olympians, 4,350 Paralympians) from 206 olympic and 184 paralympic delegations hailing from five continents. They are followed by over 13 million spectators and 4 billion viewers over the world through more than 100,000 hours of TV broadcasts. The Games’ impact is unparalleled among all sports, economic and cultural events in the world.

Created in January 2018, Paris 2024 is headed by Tony Estanguet, three-time Olympic champion and IOC member. It is administered by an Executive Board (EB) that includes the project’s founding members: CNOSF, the City of Paris, the State, the Ile-de-France Region, CPSF, Métropole du Grand Paris, the Seine-Saint-Denis Departmental Council and representatives of the local authorities involved in the Games.

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