Moore Waves
“This is what we do, but this isn’t who we are.” Carissa Moore spent years chasing results for validation. Now she’s figuring out what competition looks like when you already know your worth.
By Glorious
Photography by Dominique Powers
It’s fair to say Carissa Moore has a lot on her plate.
Five-time surfing world champion.
Olympic gold medallist.
Founder.
Mentor.
Mother.
Carissa is standing at Lower Trestles in California, surrounded by a group of young girls who have just been put through their paces as her Moore Aloha foundation joins forces with the World Surf League’s Rising Tides programme for a Q&A and surf session. “How are you feeling?” asks photographer and longtime Glorious contributor Dominique Powers.
“At this very moment?” Carissa gestures around the room and laughs. “A little tired!”
It’s a fair point. There are quieter ways to spend a Thursday. Carissa has already been training at Trestles ahead of the next stop on the World Surf League (WSL) Championship Tour before spending the afternoon with the girls of Rising Tides, the WSL’s grassroots mentorship programme, connecting the next generation of surfers with some of the sport’s leading professionals. She has arrived in California off the back of the Tour’s Fiji leg, with her husband and baby daughter ‘Olena travelling in tow.
“I’m really excited to be back here at Lowers,” she says. “When I chose to step away from competing full-time a couple of years ago, I didn’t know if I’d have another chance to kind of rewrite my story here.”
Carissa has been surfing at Trestles since she was a grom, although some of the more recent memories are complicated. “The last couple of events that I had here, I lost world titles,” she says. “I don’t want such a special place in my heart to have that taste in my mouth.”
In 2024, after more than a decade on the Championship Tour, Carissa stepped back from competing full-time. She had been competing at the highest level since she was a teenager, becoming the youngest surfer in history to win a world title when she took her first at just 18. She needed some perspective, and time in the water without every surf pointing towards another result. “Not being in a jersey and not having to worry about the next contest to prepare for, and just surf. Just maybe fall in love with it again? Maybe appreciate it and think, hey, this life, to do it as a profession, is so good.”
After five world titles, the results had begun to swallow too much of her sense of self. “I felt like I was kind of just going through the motions and lost, chasing results for validation,” she says. “I got really disconnected from knowing my worth within, and so I was constantly trying to find it elsewhere, and that leads to burnout. I just felt complete burnout, and I’d fallen out of love with the sport of surfing.”
Carissa has always been fiercely competitive, but she also came to understand how isolating that competitiveness could be. It forced her to rethink what she wanted from surfing and what she needed from her life outside competition.
Moore Aloha grew out of that period, initially as a way to support the next generation of surfer girls and help Carissa find her own way back. Today, it supports girls and women navigating mental health and wellness through sport, mentorship, community and culture. “Giving back and starting my foundation and being of service to others was my way to selfishly get back on track,” she says. “It connected me back to what’s most important, which is connection and aloha, which I’ve grown up with in Hawaii most of my life.”
connection
The work has grown with her too, reaching more underserved communities and women of different ages, although Carissa wants to keep it, in her words, “really intimate and intentional”. “There are things that I’ve been through that maybe someone else is going through too,” she says. “Maybe I can use my experience to help them really embrace their worth and know that they can be their authentic self and chase their dreams courageously.”
When Carissa and her husband Luke welcomed their daughter ‘Olena, the way she approached competition began to shift. She still wanted to pursue the sport she loved, but now she was doing it alongside motherhood. “I love being a mom and still being able to pursue something that I’m really passionate about,” she says. Returning to competition after having a baby also brought questions Carissa could not answer until she got back in the water.
“I was really nervous that I wouldn’t be able to surf the way that I wanted to again,” she says. “I would think in my head, okay, my body’s going to change so much. I just didn’t know. There was a lot of doubt.”
The answer, when she returned, was yes. Carissa could surf in the way she wanted, trusting her body, drawing the lines she wanted and pushing her turns above the lip. “I’d be so sad if I came back and I couldn’t hang and do those things anymore,” she says.
authenticity
Since returning to competition after becoming a mother, Carissa has already won again on the Championship Tour. She is doing it alongside some very familiar faces too, including fellow Hawaiian Gabby Bryan, one of her closest friends and occasionally the woman she has to beat.
“Gabby and I have such a beautiful friendship, and this year I’ve found myself genuinely cheering for her,” Carissa says.
“I want to see her succeed. I want to help her any way that I can.”
On land, they’re best friends. In the water, the WSL draw occasionally makes them rivals. Carissa’s description of facing Gabby in a heat is perhaps not what you expect from a five-time world champion. “I was like, I’m coming up against my bestie. She’s the freaking all-star, and I’ve just got to try to somehow put this together, and maybe I have a chance.”
Wanting Gabby to succeed doesn’t mean wanting to lose to her. “I know how hard she works, and I’m cheering for her just as hard,” she says. “I don’t feel like someone else’s success needs to take away from me, and my success doesn’t take away from her. We’re both rising next to each other.”
“This is what we do, but this isn’t who we are.”
“To just be able to surf the way that I know I can is the biggest gift, and to share that with my daughter and my husband has really changed my perspective on things,” she says. Carissa is still hard on herself, but her young daughter is proving a fairly effective counterargument. “She brings it back to, hey, it’s all good.”
‘Olena is too young to remember much of her mother’s return to surfing. Carissa hopes that something of it will stay with her, though. “I hope she remembers the feeling,” she says. “I hope that one day I can tell her stories, or she hears stories from other people, of how moms have chased their dreams fearlessly, and how I showed up. Hopefully that can be something that she looks at for inspiration one day.”
Five world titles, Olympic gold, a return to competition, a foundation, a family and another heat to prepare for. Carissa Moore still has a lot on her plate. What feels glorious, though, is considerably simpler.
“Honestly, laying in bed with my daughter and husband in the morning. That is pure glory.”
Photography and interview by Dominique Powers
Follow the World Surf League Championship Tour, watch live events and find out what’s coming next at worldsurfleague.com
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