While most 2024 Olympians will be battling for glory in Paris, the world's best surfers will be going for gold 16,000km away on Tahiti, where the spinning blue barrels of Teahupo'o might be the real star of the show.

A potent mix of beauty and brutality, Teahupo’o has been the venue for many of surfing’s most exciting contests and some of the sport’s seminal moments since it was revealed to the wider world in the 1990s.

Teahupo'o, which loosely translates as “Pile of Heads” or “Wall of Skulls” after a gruesome local legend, was picked to stage the Olympic competition because the beaches in France are mostly flat this time of year.

Huge winter storms in the South Pacific near New Zealand generate swells of up to 15m that travel thousands of kilometres before lurching out of the deep onto a shallow reef at “The End of the Road”, as Teahupo’o is also known.

A large trench carved by fresh water running off the jungle-clad mountains provides an incredibly close and relatively safe spot for spectator boats.

While the biggest waves rise some 10m and are not as tall as those in Portugal's Nazare or Hawaii's Peahi, the explosive power, giant tubes and sheer volume of water set Teahupo'o apart as a hydrodynamic freak of nature.

While Italo Ferreira and Carissa Moore carved and spun their way to gold in the murky, typhoon-churned waves of Japan's Shidashita beach for surfing’s debut at the Tokyo Olympics, Teahupo'o breaks perfectly over a coral reef and is renowned for its heavy, hollow tubes.

“It's a totally different wave,” said Lucca Mesinas, who represented Peru in Tokyo and has also qualified for Paris 2024.

“Japan was a beach break and a lot of wind. It was a really hard wave to surf. And Tahiti is just an amazing island with a perfect lefthander.”

“It usually is barrelling, so it's a super nice wave. It can be really big too, and it can be really strong.”

“Hosting the Olympics at Teahupo'o is the best spot they could ever pick just because it's such a good wave at that time of the year,” said local Vahine Fierro, who won the world professional tour’s Tahiti Pro in pumping waves in May.

“It’s hard to describe - you need to live it to feel what I am talking about. But paddling into a wave as hard as you can, not knowing if you’re going to make the drop or not because it is so hollow, getting into this big blue tube that just feels like time is stopping, and then coming out with the spit of the wave in your back, into the boats that are right there - it’s just indescribable and the best feeling in the world.”

The Olympics surfing competition will take place at Teahupo’o from July 27-August 5. The schedule includes potential lay-days for when conditions are unsuitable with poor winds or if the waves are too small … or too big. A total of 48 surfers (24 men and 24 women) from 21 countries will be competing, with traditional surfing powerhouses the United States, Australia and Brazil likely to be among the medals. Host nation France will also be a strong contender with two local Tahitians in their team of four.