Inside the first floating Olympic village, where the surfers will live it up in Tahiti
Surfing competition at Paris 2024 will be full of firsts and new benchmarks.
It breaks the record for the furthest distance from the host city an Olympic event has taken place, and will also have eight more athletes competing than it did in its inaugural appearance in Tokyo.
Tahiti's remote location slap-bang in the middle of the Pacific Ocean gave the IOC a headache when trying to work out where to accommodate them.
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The answer? A cruise ship. Literally.
The Aranui 5 is a mixed cargo and passenger cruise ship that operates around Polynesia. It will serve as the first ever floating Olympic Village.
Aboard the Aranui 5, a cruise and cargo ship hybrid serving as a floating athletes' village. Kanoa Igarashi
In a video you can watch in the player above, Tokyo silver medallist Kanoa Igarashi filmed a tour of the cruise ship and the facilities available to athletes.
Those facilities include a 24-hour dining hall, an activity centre with foosball and ping pong, and an Olympic gift shop.
And what cruise ship would be complete without a water slide?
The cabins are spacious with spectacular views, and the queen beds are a far cry from the cardboard beds athletes are sleeping on in the main village in Paris.
The ship's website says it can accommodate 230 passengers in 103 cabins. On top of the fun stuff mentioned above, the ship also has a lounge, two conference rooms, three bars - including one on the ship's top deck - an outdoor pool, spa, and gym.
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The Aranui 5 ship. Getty
The ship also has an on-board tattoo parlour, believed to be an Olympic first. Many Olympians get the rings tattooed on them after their first Games.
The athletes will get to the competition site at the famed Teahopo'o via a five-minute ferry trip.
The athletes were welcomed aboard the ship with a Te T'amu ceremony from the locals.
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Coach Glenn Hall and Molly Picklum at an Olympic training camp in Tahiti last month. Getty
The surfing competition at Paris 2024 will set a new record for the furthest distance from the host city an Olympic event has been held.
Tahiti is the biggest islands in French Polynesia, some 15,705km from Paris in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
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It breaks the previous record of 15,589km, which was set in the Melbourne 1956 Olympics when Australia's strict equine quarantine laws forced the equestrian events to be held in Stockholm, Sweden.
