Bounded deviations in higher genus I: closed geodesics

This is the first article of a series of two where we study the problem of bounded deviations for homeomorphisms of closed surfaces of genus $\ge 2$. This first part studies bounded deviations with respect to closed geodesics. As a byproduct of our proofs, we also get a criterion of existence of periodic orbits in terms of big deviation with respect to some closed geodesic. The combination with the second part [arXiv:2511.14226] generalises to the higher genus case most of the bounded deviations results already known for the torus.