"It’s crazy how fast all of it happened," Marks says. She'll join Team USA surfers Carissa Moore, John John Florence, and Kolohe Andino in Tokyo this summer. 1, 2019, she beat out the competition to land one of only two women's spots on the upcoming Olympic surfing team. "Now, surfing in the Olympics, it’s like, oh my god. "All I wanted to do was win world titles, 'cause I didn’t really think of surfing to be in the Olympics," she says. But she never expected to be heading for the Olympics.
At just 15, she made history as the youngest person ever to qualify for the World Surf League (WSL) Championship Tour, and earlier in 2019 won the Boost Mobile Pro Gold Coast trophy. At age 8, she started surfing with her brothers - and never stopped. Marks, who lists her hometown as Melbourne Beach, Florida, has been surfing most of her life. "We are high-level athletes, and I think people will look at us more like that instead of the cruisy, surfer type."Ĭait Miers/World Surf League/Getty Images "I think now that it’s at the Olympics, people might take a lot more serious," she says.
We all get up early, we all train super hard, we all eat healthy." She says she and the surfers she knows work with trainers and other professionals, and they deserve the respect their hard work has earned. "That’s totally the opposite of what surfing is, actually. "I feel like a lot of people think - surfers, our stereotype is kind of like, ‘cruising, smoke weed, sleep in, not really train that hard,’" Marks says. For Marks, who at 17 is the youngest athlete to qualify on the Olympic surfing team, it's a chance to prove to the world that, yeah, surfing is a real sport, stereotypes and Point Break be damned. The sports were intended to acknowledge the increasing urbanization of sports, as well as include sports that appeal specifically to younger athletes. Included in the upcoming games are skateboarding, baseball/softball, karate, sport climbing, and - of course - surfing.
That it brings a lot more attention to the sport."īack in 2016, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved five new sports for the 2020 Olympics, with an eye to appealing to younger people. " the Olympics is going to touch such a bigger audience," Marks tells Elite Daily.
And though the games are still half a year away, the teen athlete is already thinking big-picture. The 17-year-old will be part of the upcoming - and first-ever - Olympic surfing team in the sport's debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. For the first time ever, get ready to catch some waves at the 2020 Summer Olympics.