Ala Moana wouldn’t be the worst venue. It’s arguably more dynamic than Trestles, athletes wouldn’t need wetsuits, and many surf historians credit it as the birthplace of tube riding. Photo: Ho and Pringle
Surfing provides a unique challenge for Olympic Games organizing committees when selecting a venue: Each surf spot offers a different field of play that can influence the outcome. Only sailing and golf can even remotely enter that conversation; in no other sport is the venue nearly as consequential as surfing.
Los Angeles 2028 had a plethora of options to choose from for a surfing venue. There’s the famed point break of Malibu. There’s Huntington Beach, which has hosted a decade’s worth of Championship Tour events, and dozens of quality surf spots stretching south across Orange County. There are two operational pools within a reasonable distance: Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch in Lemoore and Palm Springs Surf Club, 100 miles east in the desert. There’s also the precedent that was set at Paris 2024 of using overseas territories to host surfing.
Ultimately, it came down to Huntington Beach, California and Lower Trestles near San Clemente. The International Surfing Association’s reasoning for suggesting Trestles was simple: wave quality.
Each venue had its strengths and weaknesses, but let’s take a look at why LA 2028 ultimately passed on the other options.
Huntington Beach
On paper, Huntington Beach has everything going for it. There is easy access to infrastructure with abundant parking, fancy hotels, restaurants, a shopping mall, and a power grid. There is a pier that facilitates unique camera angles for the television broadcast. It’s only 35 miles from downtown Los Angeles. Plus, the city has an active, well-funded destination marketing organization with more than 20 full-time employees lobbying to bring important events to the city.
But even with all those advantages, Huntington Beach’s shortfall is what mattered most: The waves are, for the most part, lackluster in the summertime.
When the ISA announced that HB and Lower Trestles were the final venues in consideration, they were essentially deciding whether to prioritize wave quality or fan experience/infrastructure. Wave quality won, and Huntington Beach struck out on Olympic events.
Hawaii
Oahu’s south shore boasts excellent waves, like Ala Moana Bowls, that could offer more power and diversity than Lower Trestles. A nice summertime swell at Ala Moana offers turns, tubes, and airs. So why didn’t the Olympics follow the example set by Paris 2024 and ship their surfing event to a tropical island?
I would bet that Hawaii was never even remotely considered for the simple fact that the Olympics are hosted by cities, not by countries. A city invests an immense amount of resources into securing and executing the Olympics. They do that because there are economic benefits via an injection of tourism dollars, jobs created, ticket sales, and brand exposure. Los Angeles, a city that prides itself on its surf culture, would never hand over all that value to Hawaii, which has no skin in the game.
Paris 2024 was unique because Paris had no venue to host surfing, given that a wave pool was not an option. Thus, for Paris, it was negligible whether surf went to Hossegor, Biarritz, or Tahiti. Ultimately, they decided to follow the undeniably better viewer experience and utilize the best waves available.
Wave pools
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been unwavering in its resistance to building wave pools. The ISA originally proposed the wave pool as an option for Tokyo 2020, but the IOC was hesitant to build something that wasn’t proven to hold longterm value and legacy. Now, almost a decade later, wave pools have only gotten better and some have proven that they can be an interesting business proposition. Still, the anti-wave pool sentiment persists.
If Los Angeles already had a functioning wave pool within its city limits, using one in the Olympics might look more attractive. But for the same reasons they wouldn’t want to send surfing to Hawaii, they wouldn’t want to hand it over to Palm Springs or Lemoore either.
That said, LA 2028 did send its softball and whitewater river events to existing venues in Oklahoma. But surfing is the Olympics’ cool new sport. It represents the essence of LA beach culture. They most certainly hold that value more dearly. Even so, I’m sure some within the organizing committee weren’t ecstatic that the surfing event is leaving the city of Los Angeles for San Diego County, but it’s a compromise that was necessary to make.
