Paris 2024 wishes to dialogue with French Polynesia over controversial surfing site

PARIS : Paris 2024 organisers are sticking to their choice of Tahiti's Teahupo'o site for the Olympics surfing competition despite local opposition amid a dispute over the construction of an aluminium tower that residents say would damage the coral reef.

The idyllic lagoon-side village has long hosted some of the best contests on the professional World Surf League's (WSL) championship tour, using a modest wooden tower for judges on the reef that is dismantled after every event.

Paris 2024, which has highlighted its ambition to minimise the Games' environmental impacts, plans to spend nearly $5 million to build a much larger tower with toilets, air-conditioning and space for 40 people that it says is needed to meet safety standards.

An online petition calling for the scrapping of plans for the 14-metre (45 foot) aluminium scaffolding and 800 m (half-mile) service channel through the reef had gathered almost 150,000 signatures by Wednesday.

French Polynesia president Moetai Brotherson on Wednesday said the surfing events for the Summer Games could be moved to the Taharuu, on Tahiti's West coast.

"That would have enabled us to avoid the problems we have today. At the time, it wasn't possible. In view of the issues at stake and the protests today, perhaps we can revise this option," Brotherson was quoted as saying by French media at the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).

Paris 2024 said it wished to find a solution through dialogue.

"As our president, Tony Estanguet, recently pointed out, our priority today is to find a solution that will enable us to organise the surfing events of the Olympic Games in Tahiti, at the Teahupo'o site, in the best possible conditions," Paris 2024 organisers said in a statement to Reuters.

"Tahiti was chosen