Wave of trepidation hits Olympic surfers (Will Swanton)

I’ve been wiped out a million times at Tahiti’s Teahupo’o. Tubed once. A fair trade. All for research purposes ahead of the Olympics.
The most frightening aspect is how the wave comes back for you. You get slammed onto a razor-sharp reef. Then you’re held under. Then you come up gasping for air and then the bastard somehow sucks you back down by the ankles. On one memorable ­occasion, I thought I’d lost an ­eyeball.

I’d sort of landed on the left side of my face. So much pressure was on the socket during the hold-down that I could have sworn my left eyeball just popped clean out. Like a ping-pong ball might. It didn’t even hurt. I was just sure my eyeball was gone. When I say lives are in danger when Olympic surfing is staged at Teahupo’o, which everyone calls Chopes, I kid you not. Unqualified amateurs and a 14-year-old Chinese kid are to be thrown into the most dangerous wave in the world. But you have to know this about Chopes. It’s killed before and will kill again.

Jack Robinson will have a lot of eyeballs on him as one of Australia’s hottest Olympic gold medal prospects. He’s the best big-wave surfer bound for Chopes. He won the World Surf League contest at Margaret River on ­Sunday against the second best big-wave surfer in the world, American John John Florence.

At the other end of the spectrum, however, is China’s Yang Siqi, frighteningly inexperienced. She doesn’t know what she’s in for. For her own safety, she shouldn’t be sent out in a large swell. It’s like stepping into the ring with Mike Tyson when you’ve never taken a real punch.

Current men’s world champion Brazil’s Filipe Toledo doesn’t want to surf Chopes ever again. What hope for Siqi? Robinson says it’s where he had the worst wipeout of his life.

“I remember it was my first big trip, the first big swell that I chased,” he says. “When you’re out there, sitting out the back, you can’t really see the waves coming. Usually, at all the other spots, you see the waves coming but Teahupo’o is like – it sucks below sea level. The waves go so, so low. I’d been waiting for like an hour and a half to catch one. I hopped up over this wave and I was like, ‘I’m gonna go the biggest wave that comes through.’ I took off and I couldn’t get into it in time.”

It’s the weirdest feeling when you hang atop a Teahupo’o lip. Like standing on the railing of a second-storey building, I imagine. Time stands still. A paralysing, hopeless, helpless fear.

“I just got stuck in the lip,” Robinson recalls. “It felt like forever. It felt like I was in the lip for, like, a couple of minutes because it was so slow and so tall. I could see all the reef. It was so white. Oh my God. How did I put myself in this position? As I went over I pin-dropped, like, tin-soldiered to the bottom. And then I came back up, got a breath, but then the wave sucked me back down again. It was almost like a two-wave hold-under but from the same wave. The next wave almost got me. I didn’t have any air left at the end. I got rescued. It was my first trip to Teahupo’o. Scary.”

Olympic surfers are being given the option of staying on a giant cruise ship off Chopes. The Australian team of Robinson, Ethan Ewing – who broke his back at Tahiti last year – Molly Picklum and Tyler Wright will be one of the few crews to ditch the luxury of the big boat for a humble private home in the fishing village. If Ariarne Titmus versus Katie Ledecky and Summer McIntosh looms as swimming’s Race of the Century, Robinson against Florence in the surfing final is a waxhead’s equivalent.

“I’m feeling good,” Robinson says. “That’s the final I wanted (at Margs), and I wanted to throw everything at it. We’ll have many more heats in the future, I’m sure. What a day. I’m super-humbled to be here and win. I’m so grateful for this moment. He fires me up so much. There’s no one else I’d rather final with than John John.”

It’s just such a beastly wave. Suspecting I had only one eyeball, which was better than none – do eyeballs float? Can I find it? – I distinctly remember thinking, “Get me out of here”. Mick Fanning had to surf it for years to get a handle on it. Even Jack Robbo treads carefully and he was basically raised in throaty WA barrels.

Siqi is from a landlocked area of rural China. Didn’t see the sea shells on the sea shore until she was nine, when she asked an uncle about life adventures she could dive into. He took her sailing at Hainan Island. She was no Top Slingsby, she couldn’t swim and her boat kept capsizing, but she was drawn to the motion of the ocean. She swapped her yacht for a twin-fin. Soon enough she’ll be China’s first surfing Olympian.

“I didn’t know what surfing was at the time, had no concept of the sport, and hadn’t even seen it before,” she tells China Youth Daily. “The first time I saw someone surfing was at a seaside club. I thought they were so cool.”

Chopes isn’t so cool. It’s a beautiful setting but a monster. She’s having four daily training sessions. Learning to hold her breath for three minutes, which may not be long enough if she’s dragged down by the ankles.

She qualified by beating British surf-skate phenomenon Sky Brown and Costa Rica’s WSL competitor Brisa Hennessy at the World Surfing Games at Puerto Rico, which is an impressive result, but those waves were child’s play. She’s never seen anything like Chopes.

“I love surfing because it’s particularly exciting,” she says. “Catching a good wave makes me very happy. The sea is like my good friend because it gives me a lot of good waves.”

And yet, Big Chopes ain’t particularly exciting. It’s bloody petrifying. Catching a good wave at big Chopes is borderline impossible. The sea isn’t acting like your good friend. More a sworn enemy. There have been five deaths on the reef, including big-wave experts Thierry Vernaudon and Malik Joyeux. If it can take them down, no one’s truly safe, not even Jack Robbo. Siqi’s opening Olympic heat will be nothing if not fascinating. All those eyeballs on her.