Surfing
Surfing
Making room at the top: Caroline Marks leads the way with NOW DAYS
A surfing prodigy from the start, Caroline Marks was a World Champion and Olympic gold medalist by 23. Next: inviting her fiercest rivals to create a surf film for the ages.
In 2024, Caroline Marks was given an opportunity to pitch a film to Red Bull Media to highlight her illustrious yet still budding career as a champion surfer. Instead, the newly minted World Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist surprised the Media team with an idea that will impact surfing from here on out: a generational surf film highlighting not just Marks, but five other superstars including her fiercest rivals- Caitlin Simmers, Molly Picklum, Sierra Kerr, Erin Brooks and Sky Brown. NOW DAYS was born.
Watch NOW DAYS on Red Bull TV below
45 min
NOW DAYS
A snapshot of surfing at a cultural tipping point, a new generation steps up and the future takes shape.
Marks is wise beyond her 24 years, identifying that there can be more room at the top than just one seat while carving her way into female sports advocacy for having a team player mentality in an individual sport. She still wants to win though, remarking “We all want to be the best. There's a bit of selflessness in order to make this film. In a way it is elevating all the other girls around me, but I’m also trying to beat them.”
The cast of NOW DAYS
© Arto Saari / Red Bull Content Pool
All the girls that are in this film, we just had great timing and that wouldn't have been possible if the women before us didn't progress the sport, fight for equal pay and help get surfing into the Olympics.
Marks is on point about the good timing, before she qualified for the World Championship Tour, the women’s tour frequently got the short end of the stick– often given unideal surf conditions to compete in, huge prize money gaps, all while commonly being subjected to sexualization. All of which has evolved to present day respect and adoration from both industry and fans.
In 2017, Marks became the youngest surfer to ever qualify for the World Surf League Championship Tour at 15 years old (Until Tya Zebrowski in 2025 at 14 years old). In 2018, Marks unsurprisingly won Rookie of the Year. The following year, she won her first WSL Tour event, the season kick-off comp at Snapper Rocks, Australia, which was the first Professional Tour event to award equal prize money to both women and men.
Marks attributes her instant and continued success to her familial upbringing in a small beach town in Florida. As the third of six children with two older brothers, Marks strived for her brothers’ approval at everything she did in life. As a pre-teen, she was a stellar barrel-jumper on horseback, which undoubtedly helped develop her courage and grit. In an effort to impress her brothers, she started surfing at age 10 and never looked back.
Her brothers were ruthlessly critical of her. “It was really hard to impress them,” Marks recalls. “In the moment, I thought they were so mean, but I'm grateful for it now because it helped make me into a savage competitor.”
Marks is revered by her competitive peers for her precision and prowess. When asked her opinion, 2024 World Champion Caitlin Simmers remarked, “Caroline is an absolute crazy-consistent surfer that never falls. She’s one of the best surfers in the world and is so hard to beat.”
Caroline Marks getting barreled Teahupoʻo, Tahiti, French Polynesia
© World Surf League / Red Bull Content Pool
Timing is critical in surfing and often separates the greats. A tactician, Marks has a clear natural talent for timing on waves, as if she’s mastered reading the ocean and moving her body with it. “The ocean is the great equalizer.” Marks told Ashlyn Harris on the Wide Open Podcast. “You can prepare the hardest and do all the right things and ride the right board and have a perfect plan with your coach, but the ocean's going to do what it wants. And you just have to be really good at going with the flow.”
Marks’ wisdom continued, “Learning to go with the flow is also good in life too, because a lot of things in life are out of our control. So I feel surfing is great because it's taught me a lot of life lessons.”
Marks has been on a roll ever since her return to competition in 2022 after taking a leave of absence for half of the season to reboot her mental health and re-stoke her fire for surf and progression. While scary at the time, she said “I think it taught me vulnerability is very powerful, and it's okay not to be okay sometimes, and it's also okay to work on yourself.”
Bouncing right back, in 2023, Marks defeated Carissa Moore to win her first World Title at her now-California homebreak Lower Trestles. The following year she claimed the Gold Medal at Teahupo’o and finished Runner-Up to the World Title. Again in 2025, she finished 2nd on the World Tour, proving to her peers that if they want a World Title, they’re going to have to get through her to do so.
Surfing as a sport is unique in many ways. In competition, judging keeps it subjective, the ocean invokes the element of luck of who gets the best waves, and most surfers lose more than they win as with most individual sports. Outside of competition, what is often referred to as Free Surfing, is arguably just as important to the progression and culture of the sport.
The super six cast of NOW DAYS
© Arto Saari / Red Bull Content Pool
The new surf film NOW DAYS documents the camaraderie and respect Marks and her peers have for each other while they all strive to be the best in the world. Without the confines of judges and a time clock, their surfing flourished. Marks fed off the inspiration, “Monkey see monkey do. When I see them do something, I’m like, I can do it too. The progression is going crazy, it's really happening right now.”
Ashyln Harris compared them perfectly on her podcast, “You remind me of Lindsey Vonn. What's so interesting about you all, is you live this experience. You are not living on the edge. You are the edge. You are pushing boundaries and things that were never expected of you. And that is literally the epitome of what a Red Bull Athlete is.”
Marks’ goal for NOW DAYS is to ultimately inspire generations to come, “I think now it is our responsibility to make the next generation's future even brighter than it was for us. Strive for more and push for more progression because if they see us do it, they're going to think ‘oh, that's possible.’”
The future is bright for the next generations, and still for Marks and her co-stars, “It’s really still just the beginning for us, too. NOW DAYS is this starting point, this ignition of where surfing is going to go.”
Watch Now Days on Red Bull TV or Red Bull Surfing Youtube.
