It’s called place of skulls. It’s the most terrifying venue in Olympic history

livemint.com:

Before Olympic surfers actually see the Teahupo’o wave arrive, in those final pristine moments of calm before all hell breaks loose, they will hear it coming. Cries rise from the flotilla of boats carrying spectators and rescue teams as they spot the mountain of water rolling towards them roughly 500 yards off the coast of Tahiti. When it arrives, a thick slab of ocean will suddenly surge into the air and fold over on itself.

Then it claps down in a movement so powerful that it sounds like a bomb going off. “It’s not the time to be like, ‘Oh, God…I don’t know if this is going to work out for me,’" says Jessi Miley-Dyer, a pro surfer and Commissioner for the World Surf League. “You’ve got to paddle into it, then pull your head down and go, ‘Okay, I’m going to make this, and this is going to be the ride of my life.’" To the uninitiated, the idea of holding the surfing competition of the Paris Olympics 9,800 miles from the French capital might sound odd.

There’s no shortage of respectable waves on the Atlantic coast of France. But none of those surfing spots can generate the mix of exhilaration and primal fear that gave Teahupo’o its name in Tahitian: the place of skulls. Teahuppo’s swell originates from winter storms at the southwestern edge of the Pacific Ocean, near New Zealand.

It then travels virtually unimpeded for days across deep waters, gathering momentum and energy, before slamming into Tahiti. The pitch of this collision is amplified by the unique underwater topography of the island’s coastline, which is bordered by an extremely shallow reef that suddenly drops off into the ocean abyss. Daring to surf Teahupo’o requires a willingness to place yourself at the intersection of an unstoppable force and an immovable