Caroline Marks Shares Fierce Footage From Dominant Olympic Surfing Performance

The two-time Olympian notched the highest score of the day during Round 1 of the competition in Tahiti.

Caroline Marks / Thiago Diz/Getty Images

The Paris Olympics are off to an impressive start for Caroline Marks. In the first round of the surfing competition—which she shared snippets from on her Instagram—the 22-year-old American won her heat with a score of 17.93, which was the highest score recorded out of all surfers in Round 1.

After narrowly missing the podium at the 2020 Tokyo games, Marks is clearly looking to prove herself in Tahiti, the French Polynesian island where the surfing competition is taking place. The young athlete headed into her second Olympics having added a few more impressive wins to her professional surfing résumé—and likely with a little more confidence, too. At the end of the 2023 season, she won her first championship on the WSL Women's World Tour.

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But Marks isn’t solely focused on her own success in Tahiti—she’s looking out for her teammates, too.

“Everyone’s just been so positive and so excited to be here,” Marks said after Round 1. “It’s really rare to stay with your other competitors—it’s a very individual sport. I think we’re just having a lot of fun and feeding off of each other. And even though we are all individually here to win our medals, we're all backing each other and supporting each other … We’re all just really enjoying it because it's so rare for us.”

With the top score on the day, the Florida native advanced to Round 3 of the competition. Her quest for an Olympic medal continues today in a head-to-head battle with Chinese surfer Siqi Yang at 5:48 ET.