Almost 16,000 kilometres away from Paris, the furthest an Olympic event has ever been from a host city, the opening heats at famous surf break Teahupo’o are now completed. While Australians Ethan Ewing and Tyler Wright have made a promising winning start, our top-ranked male and female surfers, Jack Robinson and Molly Picklum, will fight early Monday morning (Australian time) to get their Olympic campaign back on track in their respective elimination Round 2 heats. Nothing comes easy at the Olympics; world number three Jack Robinson was agonisingly close to winning his opening heat with a score of 13.
36 just short of French heat winner Joan Duru (world number 42) who notched up 13.84. It came after Robinson suffered an injury scare days before competition began when he cut his ankle in training at Teahupo’o.
Molly ‘Pickles’ Picklum went down after drawing one of the toughest opening heats imaginable against WSL world number one, Caitlan Simmers, and top Brazilian contender Tatiana Weston-Webb. With Ethan Ewing and Tyler Wright safely through to round three, and the proven big wave ability Robinson and Picklum can draw upon, hopes for surfing medals still remain high for Australia. Tyler Wright’s brother, Owen Wright, picked up Australia’s first ever Olympic surfing medal at the Tokyo Games where the sport was first introduced, in vastly different conditions than Teahupo’o.
The beautiful beast of a wave that is Teahupo’o in Tahiti (commonly referred to as the h.