First Look: Controversial Olympic Surfing Judging Tower Built at Teahupo'o

After all the back-and-forth – will they build it or won’t they? – the tower has finally been installed. And now, we have our first look at it.

The drone footage comes from Australian surf photographer, and longtime documenter of Teahupo’o, Tim McKenna. He captioned it with the following:

“The new tower is up.

"The wave is as perfect as it has ever been.

“The coral suffered minimal damage after a channel was marked in the lagoon so the construction boats could access easily.

“It will take some time to see if Ciguatera has drastically increased in certain fish living in that specific lagoon area.

“Meanwhile the aluminum construction looks pretty slick and was assembled faster than expected.

“Tahiti now has a state of the art judging tower for the 20 next years of surf events at the #endoftheroad.

“The Teahupoo village and all the population is ready to cheer on local surfers @vahinefierro and @kaulivaast to take gold this July at the @paris2024”

So, all that fuss for nothing? Are McKenna’s words accurate in that the tower construction had minimal damage on the precious reef? A new era for Teahupo’o?

Or…

Will the locals burn it down in the middle of the night?

Stay tuned.