Carissa Moore Says Morning of 2021 Olympic Final Was ‘Worst Nightmare’

The quality of waves (or lack of quality waves) can often be the top thing that triggers surf fans when it comes to contests at the most elite levels. Sometimes it feels like the ocean intentionally plans the greatest conditions outside the margins of Championship Tour event windows, and when that happens you’re guaranteed to hear gripes about the world’s best surfers deserving to surf in only the world’s best waves.

This was also a major storyline of the sport’s first run at the Olympic level. Conditions at Tsurigasaki Surfing Beach looked anything but ideal, whether you were considering a random everyday go out or a historic day for the sport. To Carissa Moore, the conditions that morning were her “worst nightmare.”

But as Senior Editor Joe Carberry pointed out that day, “the waves were anything but perfect and the upsets were many, which may have actually made the whole thing better.”

The big, victory-at-sea-like conditions forced Moore to take an unconventional approach. Her coach Brett Simpson advised her to leave the initial lineup and pick waves off of the nearby jetty.

“No one had been surfing there the entire day but because of the tide coming up and the swell changing it had moved closer to the pier,” she remembers. “I don’t know if I ever made it as close to the pier as he wanted because the current was raging. There was a lot of paddling. A lot of current. It was definitely a test of my physical fitness. But then there was a surrender.”

As we know, Moore won gold that day in Japan. She’ll defend her Olympic championship later this summer, only this time in Tahiti. And hopefully Teahupo’o will deliver the goods.

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