Does the South Pacific have another one of these swells on tap for the Games? Photo: Cola Bros//Screenshot
Much has been made of last week’s Teahupo’o swell — a real banger that could either end up as one hell of an Olympic preview or a near miss that came oh-so-close to that Summer Games competition window. Kauli Vaast set the bar for the rest of the Olympic field, even if his biggest highlight came on a wave he was towed into. The Games, of course, won’t feature tow ropes and Jet Skis, but seeing a local steal the show so close to the Paris Olympics is a solid reminder of the unique home field advantage in competitive surfing.
One wildcard in the gold-medal-favorites guessing game is Griffin Colapinto. On one hand, he’s grown into a perennial world title threat because he is the total package as a surfer – as adept in solid surf as he is turning Trestles into a skatepark. Then again, while nobody will scoff at Griff’s abilities in heavy tubes, Tahiti hasn’t produced his greatest Championship Tour results. Colapinto’s never placed higher than equal ninth in Tahiti since joining the CT full time in 2018. What gets trickier is the fact that he’s been sent home by the likes of Gabriel Medina, Kauli Vaast, and João Chianca in some of those years — all competing in the Olympics later this month (and Vaast and Colapinto will face off in the Games’ three-man opening round).
Past performance doesn’t translate directly to future results though. Griffin and his brother Crosby took a recent trip to Tahiti and scored some legit Olympic preview waves. Griffin admits it “was a little nerve racking surfing these waves before the Olympics,” but the edit he came back with doesn’t look like a guy worth betting against at Teahupo’o. The results might have eluded Griffin Colapinto in Tahiti to this point but it’s certainly not because he can’t put on a good show during a solid swell at The End of the Road.
