Meet The Hardware That Helped Johanne Defay Win Bronze In Tahiti

The Oakley helmet everyone is talking about, but no one can find.

hardware // Aug 8, 2024

Words by Michael Ciaramella

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Picture this.

It’s a clean four-foot day at Teahupo’o. You’re paddling into the first wave of your 2024 Olympic campaign. You slip off on the drop, go awkwardly over the falls, and crack your head on the reef.

Upon surfacing, you dab the zone of impact. Your hand returns with a crimson red hue. Fuck.

Not the start you were looking for on your quest for Olympic glory — and exactly what happened to Johanne Defay in Tahiti this past week.

‘Tis but a flesh wound! Photo: McKenna/ISA

Following the incident, Johanne contemplated her situation. She sat in the lineup for a second, blood gushing from her forehead, before paddling back to the channel.

“Then the girls in my heat were like, ‘Oh, you’re bleeding,'” Johanne told Stab, post-heat. “So I was like, ‘Okay, maybe I should go check.’ I went back to the ski and they were like, ‘You’re ok, just put this on to be safe.’ So I did that and then paddled back out.”

The this Johanne’s referring to is the new WTR Icon by Oakley — a soon-to-be-released surf helmet that was hand-delivered to every Olympic surfer before the Games. Kinda like when Beats by Dre carpet-bombed the 2012 London Olympics with their oversized headphones, but a little less scandalous, since Oakley was an official Paris 2024 sponsor.

The helmet was developed from years of R&D with Oakley’s top surfers and head-safety team. As a result, it looks quite different to anything else on the surf market — with a porous, skeletal structure as opposed to complete iron-dome coverage. This makes the helmet lighter than its competitors, less buoyant, and less impactful on your audio-visual senses.

The process and the people behind WTR Icon. Photo: Oakley

But at the end of the day, a helmet’s only job is to keep your egg from cracking. So before bringing them to Tahiti, Oakley sent the WTR Icon off to the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab, to be compared to the two main players in the surf headgear space: Simba and Gath.

The results?

WTR Icon scored a 4/5 in protection, whereas Simba and Gath (depending on helmet model) scored a 0 or 1/5.

“I think I’m tough,” Johanne said. “So no matter what, I’ll try my best.” Photo: Jimenez/ISA

Back to Johanne.

After returning to the lineup in that Round 1 heat, she proceeded to thread multiple backside cannons through the west bowl, only to be knocked off by a bit of shrapnel near the exit. Johanne lost that round, but gained something in the process.

“I didn’t think, ‘Oh I got stitches, now I can beat everybody.’ It wasn’t like that. But a lot of things can fuel me.”

Johanne preceded to win three consecutive heats against event favorites Molly Picklum, Vahine Fierro, and Carissa Moore, before losing to Caroline Marks on a legitimate tie-breaker. Not one to go home empty-handed, Johanne won the resulting bronze medal match over Brisa Hennessy, earning herself (and the WTR Icon) a spot in Olympic history.

Not to mention, the helmet was also worn by Joao Chianca, Luana Silva, Nadia Erostarbe, and other surfers throughout the event. We have a feeling it will be worn by a lot more surfers in the near future. Photo: Miller

“Even on the smaller days, it was so shallow — I didn’t want to hit my head again,” Johanne concluded. “With the helmet I felt more secure not hitting the reef for sure.”

The WTR Icon will be available for purchase in late 2024, and we’ll be working on our own review of the helmet in the coming weeks.