10 to watch: USA's Carissa Moore on finding balance before Olympics: 'I'm not just a surfer'

Carissa Moore, a four-time world champion surfer, knows what could happen if she fails to win the gold medal when the sport makes its Olympic debut at the Tokyo Olympics.

"I’m not going to lie," Moore said. "I have a really hard time dealing with defeat. Like my husband knows, I have a full, 24-hour period where I’m allowed to be irrational and talk crazy and throw a fit and cry."

Moore has had to contend with more than her competition. She also has battled her emotions, tied to the burden of her success, such as being inducted into the Surfers’ Hall of Fame at the age of 21.

Now 28, Moore won world championships in 2011, 2013 and 2015. Over the next three years, however, she failed to win a title and lost her signature confidence.

"I can remember rock bottom," Moore told USA TODAY Sports. "It was 2018 at Jeffreys Bay (in South Africa) and the waves were pumping, they were amazing. It’s probably the best you could ask for, and usually when the swell provides, I feel like I step up and I perform well. And I just totally fell apart.

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"I was overcome with anxiety and I ended up losing really early in that event. I just remember keeping my jersey on, surfing all the way down the point, going for a walk miles down the beach and, it’s like, being so bummed that I just wanted to paddle out and not come back."

Her struggles in the water affected life on dry land.

"That unhappiness was starting to leak into my personal life and weigh on my marriage," she said.

After the debacle in Jeffreys Bay, so began the changes. It started with a call to a "mental coach" she’d been working with off and on.

"I was like, ‘OK, we got to start talking every day and let’s work through this stuff I got between my ears,’ " Moore said.

Journaling. Self-reflection. Taming her inner critic.

It was all part of Moore’s journey.

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"I was starting to change the way that I talk to myself," she said. "Instead of talking down to myself, it was like, ‘Hey, you’re good enough! You got this!’ So it’s been work everyday. It still is work everyday.

"It took me a while to separate myself from my results and be like, ‘Hey, I’m more than just winning a contest. I’m not just a surfer. I’m a sister, I’m a wife, I’m a friend, I’m into scrapbooking, I like skateboarding with my dogs, like, there’s so many dimensions to me."

Coached by her dad Chris

Of course those who know about Moore’s rise in professional surfing would note that she also is a daughter.

Her father, Chris Moore, introduced her to surfing when she was just 5 and served as her primary coach — until about the same time her struggles began.

In 2016, Chris Moore said, he began to pull away and re-examine his relationship with Carissa at the same time she made it clear she wanted more control.

"There’s times where I’m like, ‘Well, have I been too hard on her?’ " Chris Moore said. "Because being too hard on her sometimes has served a purpose and has gotten her to be successful in winning some more titles, but it doesn’t make that necessarily a path that’s sustainable.

"So it’s a little bit of this balance between pushing and letting go."

Letting go is what he did during 2016 and 2017. But he reached out after seeing his daughter unravel at Jeffrey’s Bay in 2018.

Chris Moore called his daughter and the two implemented a new approach.

"It’s just more aggressive," he said. "Any great performance athlete has to be on edge. You can’t be soft. You have to push. You have to push the borders of your performance."

In 2019, Carissa Moore won her fourth world championship — and first since 2015.

"Then I started getting I think a little too passionate again and we had to do a little check and balance," Chris Moore said.

'A lot of growing' in three years

Currently the top-ranked women’s surfer in the world, Carissa Moore has used other coaches on site at the World Surf League contests this season. But Chris continues to play a role and planned to help his daughter prepare for the Olympics during training near her home in Hawaii.

"I wouldn’t be where I am today without my dad," she said. "He’s been there from the very beginning. He was the guy that pushed me into my first wave and gave me the gift of ocean and surfing."

As far as Carissa Moore regulating her emotions, her husband, Luke, said a tournament earlier this season was the first he could remember where Carissa Moore lost and did not cry.

"I’m really proud of her," he said. "She definitely did a lot of growing those three years. I saw a lot of growth, and it kind of seeped into everything."

As the Olympics approached, Carissa Moore indicated she was thinking about more than winning a gold medal.

"Every year that I’m competing, I think things are evolving and changing with how I do things, especially with motivation," she said. "I feel like I’m doing it because I want to do it and I love it, and there isn’t that pressure from anybody else.

"The journey isn’t over, but I definitely feel more settled in who I am today."