Take an interactive ride on the waves with Olympic surfer Caroline Marks ahead of the Games

It’s big enough for her to barrel — riding through a cascading tunnel of water — but also easy to navigate, allowing Marks to build speed and use the wave lip like a ramp, launching her and her board into the air for twirling tricks. The mere idea of this mythical wave makes her smile.

“Siiiiick”Caroline Marks

Marks, 19, spends hours in the water every day, waiting for the perfect wave. She’ll do her best to catch one at the Tokyo Games, where surfing will make its Olympic debut, and Marks is poised to make a big splash. As the sport edges into mainstream acceptance, many expect Marks to emerge as the face of women’s surfing for years to come.

Easygoing and affable away from the water, Marks can be downright vicious on her board. Already a prodigy of sorts in the surfing community, she’s a podium contender in Tokyo because she surfs with no limits. She studies the advanced tricks from the men’s side of the sport and attacks each swell with ferocity. If the wave seems a bit like a bucking bull, Marks has it tamed and under her control.

“She’s had that confidence from a young age,” says Brett Simpson, head coach of the four-person U.S. surfing team. “She’s just carried that up the ranks. She’s confident in big situations and doesn’t seem to be fazed by anyone or anything.”

The sport is unlike anything else at the Olympics. The competition venue constantly changes. Each surfer experiences different conditions and has different opportunities. A shift in the wind direction can alter an entire event. Imagine a baseball diamond morphing between innings or a soccer pitch shifting at halftime, emerging pointed in a different direction.

“It’s just such a different, unique sport. We have to rely on Mother Nature to perform.”Caroline Marks

Judges will score each ride, but only a surfer’s top two will count toward a final score. The final rounds feature a head-to-head format, with the top surfer advancing.

Judges are studying each surfer’s style on the board — their speed, power and flow — but also taking into account the difficulty of the ride; the way a surfer strings together tricks, turns and maneuvers; and how each pushes the sport’s boundaries.

“A perfect ride is a 10-point wave and surfing,” said Mike Parsons, the legendary surfer and Marks’s personal coach. “Normally when you see a 10-point score, a surfer will perform a number of really difficult maneuvers on a really quality wave. So half of the battle is finding the right wave.”

On her board, Marks often relies on muscle memory. Having her explain her biggest, baddest tricks is like asking her to describe her breathing.

“I don’t know; you just kind of do it,” she says.

Parsons has seen enough surfers to appreciate the mechanics. Marks’s leg strength and low center of gravity allow her to cut through the waves. She naturally knows how to shift her weight and shuffle her feet on the board. She uses her legs to pump on her board and generate speed on the wave. That gives her power entering a turn or if she wants to shoot off the wave lip and into the air.

“I definitely want to be gnarly at everything.”Caroline Marks

Marks is perhaps the most powerful female surfer, and her sharp backside turns have lit up the tour. Surfing with her back facing the wave, Marks edges toward the pocket — close to where the water breaks and spills over. This is where the wave is also the steepest, and Marks can rip off powerful backside turns, spraying a wall of ocean water into the air before continuing her ride. She’s so quick that she can often reel off two or three in a row, which allows her to stack up big points on a small section of a wave.

Turns have varying degrees of difficulty, and Marks’s tricks include backside blow tails, tail slides and off-the-lip turns, in which she’ll ride vertically to the top of the wave before sharply changing directions and manipulating the board by shifting her weight, repositioning her feet and powerfully twisting her body.

“It’s those subtle movements,” Parsons said, “and linking them and timing them.”

Surfing frontside — meaning Marks is facing the wave — she can pull off large carving turns, but this is also where she might be on the lookout for aerial possibilities — midair tricks that are much more common and complex among male competitors.

In recent years, women’s surfing has been progressing at a lightning-fast rate. No longer limited to style and grace, today’s female surfers bring power, speed and acrobatics. Both American competitors — Marks and Hawaii native Carissa Moore, a four-time world champion — will be seeking air to impress judges in Tokyo, if the waves allow.

If Marks can pull off her frontside air reverse — a trick in which she ejects off the wave and spins 180 degrees, completing the full rotation upon landing — she just might land on the Olympic medal podium.

“If you do it consistently, you’ll just be so much ahead of the game. If you have that in your bag of tricks, it just makes you so much more deadly.”Caroline Marks

Marks grew up around the water in Melbourne Beach, Fla., in an area that has produced some great surfers — Kelly Slater among them — but no one confuses the wave breaks with those in Hawaii or along the California coast. Marks’s first love was competitive horseback riding. It wasn’t until she was 11 and won a national surf contest that she focused on the sport. She was pushed by her three older brothers on and off the water, often to the point of tears.

“They definitely give me a lot of constructive criticism,” she said with a laugh.

When did you get hooked on surfing?

Walk me through the moment you realized you qualified for the Olympics.

What is next for you?

Parsons was a world-renowned big-wave surfer who has dipped his board in every corner of the sport. He first met Marks when she was all of 13. “I was blown away with her style,” Parsons said, “how natural she looked on the wave.”

The Marks family relocated to California to be closer to Parsons and the West Coast waves. Everyone on the beach or on their boards saw that Marks was different. She understands the water, commands her board with such power and constantly tries new things. And she’s doing everything on her own schedule.

She turned pro at 13. Her five-year goal to make the world tour? That took six months, and at 15 she was the youngest surfer — male or female — to qualify for the sport’s top circuit. The next year, she won rookie of the year honors. And at 17, Marks set her sights on her first tour win. Instead she got two, topping the vets with way more experience and seasoning. Her hopes to earn a spot in the Olympics? She managed that on her first try, qualifying for Team USA in December 2019.

“Everything just happened so fast and I’ve just been enjoying the ride and just trying to like be in the moment and enjoy every day as much as possible.”Caroline Marks

Professional surfers live a nomadic, unusual lifestyle; the very best trot across the globe in search of the gnarliest waves. They have a pretty good idea of what waves they’ll find where, and Marks is excited to compete in Japan. The waves at Tsurigasaki Beach, located less than 50 miles from Tokyo, are smaller and similar to the ones she rides daily in Southern California, especially the imminently rippable sets at Trestles Beach, not far from her San Clemente home.

Tokyo will be hot, and the smaller waves will require some work. To prepare for all conditions, Marks does daily dry-land workouts and usually hits the water for two surf sessions. Right after, she likes studying video of her rides, dissecting her moves and analyzing her mechanics.

The year-long Olympic postponement has given her more time to hone her craft. With competitions shuttered, the World Surf League season canceled and travel limited last year, Marks spent months riding the Tokyo-like waves around San Clemente. To fine-tune tricks, she visited a wave pool in Waco, Tex., where technology can mimic the anticipated Olympic waves and provide conditions that are consistent, allowing a surfer to get a steady stream of repetitions.

Tokyo’s waves ultimately will decide whether Marks and her fellow surfers will get a chance to showcase all of their skills. They’re anticipating waves that are waist-high or slightly bigger. Marks might not see the perfect wave this summer, but she’ll still try to dazzle a global audience that might be tuning in to watch surfing for the first time.

“It creates much more of a show when the ocean comes to the party,” Simpson said. “We’re not necessarily expecting great surf. Obviously, if we get it, we’ll be stoked. But ultimately it’s going to be a lot of creating your own maneuvers and generating your own speed, which I feel Caroline’s very ready for.”