Caroline Marks: ‘I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to find happiness again in my surfing and in myself’

The newly minted world surfing champion opens up about the weight of expectations, what she learned from stepping away from the tour and her unfinished business at next year’s Olympics

“I feel like I’m floating on a cloud,” says Caroline Marks, filling my screen with warmth and breezy joy as she attempts to describe the euphoria of winning her first world surfing title. “I can’t even put it into a single word. It’s just something that I’ve worked toward every single day in my life since I started.”

It’s been three days since the easygoing American prodigy ripped and carved her way to the sport’s biggest prize, showing the power, form and preternatural instinct that have become her hallmarks in sweeping the best-of-three championship series against Carissa Moore at the World Surf League Finals at Lower Trestles, the revered break near the San Diego-Orange county border that has become so central to her journey.

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