The best American surfers will share the same house — competitors on the water and roommates between sessions — and in a generational shift, Carissa Moore, widely regarded as the greatest woman to ever ride a wave, could be sitting across the breakfast table from 18-year-old Kaitlyn Simmers, ready to take the baton from Moore and take the sport to new heights.
“I'll sleep next to anyone who wants to beat me up,” Moore said with a laugh, “and vice versa.”
The 31-year-old Moore made waves earlier this year when he announced he was stepping down from the professional tour to focus on the Olympics and defend his title in Tokyo. Moore said he wanted to explore other opportunities and spend more time with his family, and he hasn't yet decided whether he'll return to competitive surfing after the Olympics. The Olympics may be Moore's final shot at glory, but it also represents an opportunity for Simmers to be in the global spotlight.
“She's basically teeth “Carissa Moore, 18,” says World Surf League commentator Joe Turpel, who will be covering the Olympic competition for NBC, “…it's hard not to draw the comparison. This is a generational talent that harkens back to when Carissa first began taking the world by storm.”
Not to be forgotten is the third Tahitian housemate, Caroline Marks, 22, the reigning world champion and something of a bridge between the generations: Marks finished fourth at the Tokyo Olympics and is in a position to both chase Moore's legacy and fend off the younger, aspiring surfers behind her.
If Moore does indeed retire (she won't use the word retire), she will be doing so near the peak of her career, even though she has only competed twice this season. A five-time world champion with 29 victories on the World Surf League Champions Tour, she won three events last year and finished on the podium four more times.
The Hawaiian took over as women's surfing began to make major strides over the past decade: economic and opportunity gaps have narrowed, and women now compete for the same prize money, ride the same waves and increasingly attempt the same tricks as men.
“She's really kind of a pioneer in that respect,” World Surf League commissioner Jessi Miley Dyer said, “She's someone who made people redefine what they could do. She made all these tricks very normal for women.”
While many of Moore's generation studied men's videos to learn new tricks and challenge conventions, Simmers and a growing number of teenagers grew up watching the glass-shattering YouTube exploits of Moore, Stephanie Gilmore, Tyler Wright, Lakey Peterson and others.
“It was a different world back then,” Moore says. “Even 13 years ago, everybody knew that when the wind picked up and the conditions got bad, it was time to send the girls out. But that's not the case these days. I think there's more of a mindset of, 'OK, it's a good day. Let's give everybody a chance.'”
Simmers was only four years old when Moore made her professional debut in 2010. Her development has been deliberate and rapid. At 15, she won the 2021 U.S. Open of Surfing, qualifying for the Champions Tour the following season. But she decided to wait a year to continue her development. She won two events as a rookie last year and has already won three this year. Simmers is set to win the tour in Rio de Janeiro in June and will enter the Olympics as the No. 1 surfer in the world.
“As they say in surfing, young surfers and kids are just so happy all the time. They just want to surf all day, and she has that mentality,” Turpel said. “…She knows how to handle fear like I've never seen her before. You never know if she's scared of big waves.”
Growing up in Oceanside, California, Simmers had no shortage of professional surfers to look up to, and despite the age difference, she quickly became accustomed to competing on tour with the elite athletes she'd rooted for since childhood.
“Carissa can still win a world title,” Simmers said in a recent interview. “She's still the best surfer in the world.”
But Simmers has essentially entered a different sport, with more sponsors and more opportunities. Women's surfing competitions aren't run on separate tracks from the men's, and no one is telling her what she can't do. Instead, people are encouraging her to try new things, to take to the skies, barrel through barrels and tackle the toughest waves.
“When you think about 18-year-old Carissa versus 18-year-old Katy, Katy's on a tour that's completely mixed,” Miley Dyer said. “When you think about prize money equality, that wasn't there when Carissa was growing up, and Katy's always been all she's ever known, so the tour itself has changed a lot.”
The next generation of surfers, including teenage sensations like Simmers, Sawyer Lindblad, Betty Lou Sakura Johnson and Erin Brooks, are showing what's possible by using their creativity and athleticism to take the sport not just on the water but into the air as well.
Whether these Olympics are a coronation for Simmers or a victory lap for Moore, they'll both be facing the same challenge: one of the toughest surfing breaks on the planet. Choupo is known for its thunderous waves that crash over a shallow reef, producing some guaranteed photogenic barrels that are equal parts exhilarating and terrifying, even for experienced surfers.
“It's not about style,” Simmers says, “it's about how much effort you put into the wave. You just have to throw yourself off a cliff, stare down the channel, and hope you make it through. … I love those waves. They're so scary.”
The competition kicks off on Saturday in what will be the farthest Olympic event from a host city: Tahiti, the largest and most populous island in French Polynesia, with 48 surfers — 24 men and 24 women — attempting to master powerful waves.
The challenge at Te Aupo was a big part of Moore's decision to pull away from the tour and train harder before the Olympics — she wants to win another medal, not just pass the baton.
“This is one of those waves that's really dangerous and violent,” Moore said. “It's a really scary wave. I feel like the more uncomfortable I get, the more comfortable I get.”
Moore is coy about what her post-Olympics life will be like, except that she wants to spend more time with her family, explore film projects and grow her young women-focused nonprofit, the Moore Aloha Charitable Foundation.
“When I first started surfing, sometimes I was the only girl in the water,” Moore says, “but now when I look at my local surf spots, there are often more girls in the water than boys. People are just as excited to see women as they are guys, if not more, and it's super cool. I never thought it would happen.”
