Her recent run shouldn’t be overshadowed by anything in competitive surfing. Photo: Thiago Diz//World Surf League
With Carissa Moore already into the quarter finals at the Corona Open J-Bay this week, it’s a good time to analyze and celebrate her recent domination of the sport. To do that it’s worth casting our hive mind to the J-Bay Open back in 2018. The women were returning to Jeffreys Bay for the first time in a decade. Global pandemics were still Hollywood concoctions. Conditions were flawless for the entire competition: 6-8 feet, brushed by stiff offshores.
Despite the perfect waves, Moore exited early in round three. It was another blow in what had become her biggest slump since the Hawaiian had burst onto the CT scene in 2011. The loss meant she’d failed to make it past the quarters – in any event that season. It came on the heels of 2017 when she had ended the year at number five, the worst finish of her career.
After that J-Bay loss, Moore looked fatigued and despondent. The endless positivity which was her default setting had turned to self-doubt. She was undoubtedly doing her best, but for the first time, her best wasn’t leading to a world title challenge. She publicly questioned her commitment to the sport and debated whether after eight years, some time away from the tour might be beneficial.
The fact that the 2019 season rankings would determine the places for surfing’s debut at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, however, was a huge factor in her keeping on keeping on. It would be career suicide to take a break just as the sport’s biggest carrot was being hauled into place at the end of the next year.
As Moore revs her engines for this year’s lap of Supertubes four years on from that defeat, her turnaround, and domination of the sport since, has been remarkable. More than that it’s been unprecedented in women’s surfing. So why is no one talking about one of the most dominant eras of the sport? Is it recency bias and rookie infatuation? Too much attention on Toledo? Let’s take a deeper dive into the numbers during Carissa’s run and you’ll see why we should be holding her on high right now.
This year at J-Bay, Moore is definitely wearing yellow. Photo: Pierre Tostee//WSL
The stats are truly startling. Since that 2018 J-Bay Open, she has surfed in 30 CT events. In all but six she made the semis or better (that means she’s made semis in 80 percent of her starts). Of those 24 semis, she progressed to the final 13 times, winning seven. That form led to two world titles, and it could be argued she had one denied her due to the pandemic in 2020. The last title was her fifth, captured at the inaugural WSL Finals. Lest we forget, during that run she also claimed surfing’s first Olympic gold medal in the delayed Tokyo games in 2021.
Right now she’s atop the rankings, 4,000 points clear of her nearest rival, and has clinched her WSL Finals spot with two events to spare. This is, without a doubt, the most consistent and productive stretch of her surfing life. I’d argue only Kelly Slater in the middle section of the 1990s has had a longer sustained run of excellence and dominance.
In 2019, it was again at J-Bay where Moore claimed her first CT win of the season that set up her world title run. “The past couple of years has been tricky for me. I think I’ve taken myself out of the game mentally,” she said after that win. “So now to be back in the race, I’m so stoked to be part of it again. I feel like I’m back where I belong.”
She’s been there ever since. Four years ago at J-Bay the very idea of equalling or bettering Layne Beachley and Steph Gilmore’s record seven world titles seemed ludicrous. Today, anything seems possible. Carissa’s is a run of excellence that in my mind, the surfing public continues to under appreciate. That needs to change. A sixth title would certainly go a long way in doing that.
