Olympic champion surfer Carissa Moore: “I’m not ready to pass on the baton just yet” (2024)

As one of the greatest female surfers of all time, five-time world champion Carissa Moore shocked the world when she announced that she was taking a step back from the WSL Championship Tour (CT) earlier this year.

“I’m excited to see what else is out there, outside the jersey,” she told the New York Times as the news broke.

Olympics.com caught up with Moore in New York, four months after she announced her decision, to speak about what life has been like since she hung up that jersey for the time being.

Since 2010, the Hawaiian has spent up to nine months out of every year traveling and competing around the world, flying from Portugal to Australia to Brazil, to Tahiti, Fiji, South Africa, Hawaii and more, to go head-to-head against the world’s best.

Now, and for the first time in 15 years, she is waking up, smelling the flowers (literally), and choosing what her day looks like.

She hasn't gone far from the ocean, though, as she plans to defend her title at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 and preparations for that are also in full swing.

“I’m not ready to pass on the baton just yet,” Moore told Olympics.com.

• Olympic champion Carissa Moore to step away from competitive surfing after Paris 2024

• How to qualify for surfing at Paris 2024

Carissa Moore on life since stepping back from the Tour

Since her announcement to take a step back from the tour, Moore has published a book, she’s working on a documentary project, and even took a trip to Japan… without any surfboards.

But, according to the Olympic champion, it’s the “simple” things that she’s enjoying the most.

“Regardless of whether I'm prepping for a competition or putting a jersey on or not, I'm finding some way to get in the water. It just makes me happy,” she said.

“And I like hot yoga. I like spending time with my family, my friends. I like walking. I've been trying to make more time just to walk the dogs with my husband every evening, and right now it's springtime in Hawaii, so all of the flowers are blooming. It smells so saturated. Yeah, that's a must every day.”

But, with Paris 2024 right around the corner, Moore has some Olympic-level training to sprinkle into her schedule.

For the surfers, this year’s Games will be held on the infamous wave called Teahupo’o, also known as ‘The End of the Road’.

The reef break in Tahiti is one of the heaviest and biggest waves that the surfers face on Tour and will likely be substantially larger than what they saw at Tsurigasaki Beach, where surfing at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 went down.

“People have had big falls and big injuries,” Moore said, talking about the wave.

“It makes that fear factor even greater, but you could also get the thrill of your life.”

Ahead of the kick-off of the Games this summer, she plans to spend as much time training there as possible and recently returned from a trip there in March.

“My goal is to try to spend more time being uncomfortable at that wave and surfing all types of conditions.”

Carissa Moore’s legacy

Moore has seen a lot through her 14 years as a professional surfer, and although she is not quite finished, she is leaving plenty for the athletes that follow.

The first season that men and women received equal prize money for their Championship Tour wins came in 2019, and three years later, after 58 years of the Tour, both men’s and women’s competitions became fully integrated, meaning they would compete on the same waves at the same events, for every stop along the way.

“There have been a handful of women who have been there fighting that for us… I feel very fortunate to have reaped the benefits of that,” she said.

Teahupo’o was deemed ‘too dangerous’ for the women and taken off of their Tour docket in 2006, but “it should have been there all along,” Moore argued.

“If you give us the conditions, we will rise to the occasion.”

Time and time again, the Hawaiian trailblazer has risen to the occasion and broken barriers for the women that follow in her wake.

With her foundation, Moore Aloha, she will continue to work to inspire young girls inside and outside her sport for years to come.

When asked what advice she has for younger athletes, she humbly responded: “be kind to yourself and don't be afraid to fail.

"I think if I look at [myself at a] younger age, she put a lot of pressure on herself to do things right and be perfect. But there's no such thing as perfect. And we learn the most from our failures; from the times that we fall down and we get back up. I just embrace the journey and have fun.

"It's supposed to be fun; have a lot of fun. We do our best and perform our best when we're having fun.”