THE OLYMPICS AT ALL COSTS – For nothing in the world they would have missed Paris 2024. In this series, those who intend to be part of the party confide in Figaro their battle plan, between high bills and the D system. This globetrotter absolutely wants to see the surfers hurtle down the Polynesian wave of Teahupo’o.
When we talk about surfing, Marc is inexhaustible. “I don’t think anyone has seen as many surf competitions as me.”, he says, laughing. Since his childhood in Gironde, the forty-year-old grew up watching the rollers crash onto the beaches of the Atlantic coast. “I’m not a waterman as the Australians say, he specifies. But I went to the ocean all the time.”
Like many children in the region, Marc rode his first waves with a bodyboard. “A boogie morey”he takes care to specify, referring to the foam boards created by Tom Morey, American engineer-surfer, and which invaded the beaches of the Atlantic coast from the 1980s. “At 15, I started surfing with a more suitable board and then I dedicated my life to surfing”, he sums up simply. By doing odd jobs, training as a shaper (craftsman who works and repairs surfboards) or advising customers in stores specializing in board sports.
At the same time, Marc helps with surfing competitions. To Lacanau first. Since the beginning of the 1980s, the small town of Médoc welcomes every year the best surfers in the world who come to rub shoulders with the rollers of the southwest. Then he travels around the globe to discover more and more waves. “I have participated in events as a volunteer or as a simple spectator in Australia, Hawaii, South America and the French Overseas Territories”he lists before adding:“Almost everywhere, except Tahiti”.
So, when the legendary Teahupo’o wave is designated to host the Olympic surfing events, Marc jumps at the chance. “I said to myself, it’s the Olympic Games, it’s in France, I’ll be there”, he says. After seeing “the prices of inaccessible places” and without having been able to find a job on the Polynesian island, the quadra sends his application to become a volunteer, to “access this event without breaking the bank”. “It was a way of the cross, breathes the globetrotter today. The questionnaire went on and on, I felt like I was applying for an ambassadorship, it took me a week to fill it out.”
Housing but no car
First called to be a volunteer at the Bordeaux stadium, Marc harasses the Paris 2024 services to highlight his past experiences and lands a position in Polynesia. “In mid-April, I finally got a call to ask me to go to Tahiti”, he says. Neither one nor two, Marc takes his plane ticket, “with flexibility on the return date”, he specifies. For accommodation, the adventurer found a bed with a couple who welcomed him graciously, but very far from the Olympic site. For transport, he does not yet have a solution on site but the young man has created a group on social networks to organize carpooling. According to his schedule received recently, Marc will have to be present on the site at first light. Mission almost impossible by relying on the public transport provided on the archipelago.
But Marc has his pockets full of fallback plans. “It’s system D, he admits, somewhat disillusioned by the lack of information given to volunteers by the organization. If necessary, I will sleep on the beach, he blurted. I already did it in March in Puerto Rico, I can do it again in Teahupo’o.” Marc does not know if he will be able to see the athletes up close or have access to the giant screen which will broadcast on the lagoon beach. “I don’t really know how it will go there.he admits. I might be in pain, but I could say I was there.”
