Jeremy Flores has announced he’ll be stepping away from full-time competition at the end of the 2021 season. Photo: World Surf League
Jeremy Flores has long been a fiery addition to the World Tour. But on August 9, he made the announcement that he’d be stepping away from full time competition at the end of 2021.
“I don’t like the word ‘retiring’ because I don’t feel like I’m retiring at all,” Flores said on Instagram. “I’m moving on to the next chapter.”
For the last 15 years, Flores has been a bit of a throwback to the days when professional surfers were more along the lines of Bobby Martinez and Andy Irons — hard charging, unapologetic, and not afraid to speak their minds. Now, at the age of 33, he lives in Tahiti with his partner and their daughter. According to the World Surf League, Flores will “be focusing on his family, freesurfing, and supporting the next generation of Francophone surfers.”
Flores has spent nearly half of his life as a competitor. For all its positives and negatives, he wouldn’t change a thing. “I dedicated most of my life to surfing competition,” he continued. “It’s been a rollercoaster, lots of ups and downs but damn I lived it to the fullest. Some epic moments. I tried to stay real the whole time, maybe too much sometimes. But it was all worth it! If someone told me when I was a kid, the success, the life I would have, I wouldn’t have believed it. Because of professional surfing I am now lucky enough to live a happy life and provide for my whole family.”
Like most professional surfers, Flores started surfing at a very young age. He was a three-year-old on Reunion Island when he first picked up a surfboard and rode a wave. He was quickly recognized as an up-and-coming talent. Quiksilver signed him as a “Young Gun,” which has put a super charge into many young aspiring surfers’ careers.
By 2007, he was officially on the CT. He won Rookie of the Year. Three years later, in 2010, he won his first Pipe Masters. A year after that, he won the coveted Andy Irons Most Committed Award. Four years later, he won the 2015 Billabong Pro Tahiti in conditions that tested the mettle of every surfer in the contest. His second Pipe Masters came in 2017, and by then, Flores had cemented himself as one of the best barrel riders in the world. In 2019, he won the Quiksilver Pro France in Hossegor, and most recently, he had the opportunity to represent France in the Olympic Games. All told, Jeremy Flores has had an incredibly well-rounded career.
But as time has worn on, Flores’ priorities have shifted. The birth of his daughter put things into a different perspective, and he realized that something had to change. “High level sports is no joke, there is a lot of things people don’t see behind the scenes,” he wrote. “It’s intense, it takes so much energy. Since I became a father, my priority totally changed. I want to be 100 percent there for my family. The last few years I haven’t been putting enough effort to be my best version of an athlete. I didn’t have that fire anymore. It was getting hard to keep up with the new generation who are training so freaking hard.”
This isn’t the last we’ll see of Flores, thankfully. He’s excited about what his future holds — and every surf fan in the world likely is, too. “I’m frothing to work on new projects, surf trips with my friends,” he finished. “Trying to send a positive message out there the best way I can.”
