The Stab Interview With Jeremy Flores: “In A Heat, I Was Wild — I Was Like An Animal”

The world of surfing changed in front of Jeremy Flores’ eyes and beneath his feet. 

In 2007 he qualified for the CT as a child. He was 17, the youngest ever to do it at the time. It was a different era. The WSL didn’t even exist — the organization tasked with running professional surfing was referred to as the ASP, and things were much more cavalier before Zosea came in and pumped it with cash in 2013. 

The tour featured 44 surfers then. Few were getting rich. Many were getting fucked up. There was no formal drug testing policy, and the idea of traveling with a management team had yet to cross anybody’s mind. 

Who had the money for that? 

Mick Fanning finished first that year, followed by Taj Burrow and Kelly Slater. Jeremy shocked the world by finishing 8th as a rookie — just behind Pancho Sullivan and Andy Irons, just ahead of Dean Morrison and Bobby Martinez. Yes, even the act of riding a wave looked different then.

The young man from Reunion Island continued to compete for the next 13 years. Those years consisted of many all-nighters, two heavily publicized fights — one with Sterling Spencer, one alongside Sunny Garcia — a burnout, a meltdown, a $6k fine, a suspension, and four event wins at some of surfing’s most prestigious locations. 

The most recent win came in 2019, the last “normal” year of CT competition pre-Covid. Jeremy won the Quiksilver Pro France in firing waves in his adopted hometown while a massive crowd — including his wife and young daughter — cheered him on. 

In August, at the Corona Open Mexico, Jeremy announced that he was retiring from competition. This was right after he’d competed in surfing’s first Olympics. The world of surfing may have changed immensely since 2007 but Jeremy, himself, had changed too. He’d become a better person.

I called Jeremy and we talked for an hour about the highs, the lows, the brinks he’d explored, the lessons he learned, and the beauty of surfing. 

Spoiler alert: He doesn’t regret shit. 

STAB: You’d been thinking about retiring for a while. What made you decide to finally pull the trigger? 
JEREMY FLORES: The biggest thing for me is my family. I have another baby, a little boy, coming. I want to be 100% there for my family and be the best dad I can be. Traveling with the family during a pandemic is really hard, so it felt like it was time. 

[Note: His son was born before press time, but after this interview was recorded. See below.]

Didn’t you have a crazy itinerary to get to Australia this year? 
Yeah, there weren’t many flights leaving Tahiti, so we had to go through France. We went from Tahiti to France, France to LA, then LA to Sydney. I charged it with my family because otherwise, I wouldn’t have seen them for four-and-a-half months and that would have been a nightmare. Then we had to do the hotel quarantine, which I didn’t mind. We were treated really well. And it was a great time once we were there and could travel throughout the country. But, yeah, pulling it off was super complicated — it cost me something like 40k Euro. 

Was there anything else that factored into your decision? 
It seems like there are more average waves on tour now, and I can’t find that same motivation when the waves aren’t good. Plus, the level is so high nowadays and the younger kids show up so ready. They have these crazy entourages, and they don’t party or anything. They’re machines. It’s getting harder to beat them. The only shot I had was when the waves are firing, and it felt like firing waves were becoming more rare. 

When you see younger kids coming up now, do you trip on how different things were for you at that age? 
When I got on tour, it was nothing like it is today. It was still really rock and roll, but it also felt like this big family traveling to each event. There weren’t any coaches, filmers, managers, or things like that — everyone was just doing their thing, and the camaraderie was a lot stronger. Now, everyone comes with their own crew and does their own thing. It’s a lot more serious and professional. 

I’m not saying it’s bad, but for someone who knew what the tour was like back then, it’s night and day. People are doing it the right way — the healthy way — but I do think it’s a bit sad we lost that camaraderie. That’s why we were calling it the dream tour. Every event was at firing waves, and the vibe between everyone felt like a constant celebration. Win or lose, everyone was getting together and enjoying the lifestyle. It was crazy — I don’t see any other sports in the world that are like that. 

It’s fair to say the lifestyle, in general, was different back then, no? 
There were moments that were full-on rockstar. I don’t want to go into details about how I was doing it, [laughs] but I was doing the whole out all night, no sleep, straight into heats program for a bit. That was fun at the time. It was the standard back then. 

Sometimes people ask me if I wish I qualified later, but I’m like ‘No way.’ Imagine that life for a second: You’re 17, you’re traveling the world, surrounded by your heroes, getting paid to surf pumping waves and party? Are you kidding? There is literally nothing else like that. Not even in your wildest dreams. It really was the dream tour. 

Did you feel like you were accepted by the older generation when you qualified? 
When I got on, I had an attitude. I didn’t want to take shit from anyone, so obviously the older guys gave me a hard time, which is fair. I was super respectful in the freesurf sessions — I knew my place. But in a heat, I was wild. I was like an animal. 

There were a lot of people saying I got lucky, I was small, I wasn’t powerful, I couldn’t surf big waves, all that, so I felt like I had a lot to prove. And to be honest, I shocked myself. I thought I was going to come dead last in my first year. I didn’t want to show it, but that’s how I felt, so I wanted to prove it to myself, too. I’d surf against Andy or Kelly and think, ‘Ok, I should lose this heat — but I want to make it hard for them.’ Even if I lost, I wanted my heroes to recognize that I put up a fight. It worked. I finished 8th in the world and beat Kelly at small Teahupo’o that year. 

How does the surfing you saw back then compare to the surfing you see today? 
The small wave game today is crazy. Nobody used to be able to do that. But think about solid 8-foot waves — people back in the day were doing these huge top to bottom turns. It was next level. Very few people can do that now, but most of the tour could do it back then. Maybe it was because of the boards, but it seemed like people were getting so much more drive. People are so concentrated on doing crazy airs now, they’ve forgotten about pushing through the rail on a longer board. Most people want to ride shorter, wider boards to be able to land huge punts. 

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give to the 17-year-old version of yourself? 
To be honest, I achieved way more than I thought I was going to. If you told me these things when I was 16 or 17, I wouldn’t have believed them. Obviously, my career had a lot of ups and downs. There were some wild moments, but I don’t have any regrets. I was who I was. I stayed honest to myself, I never tried to show a fake image. I’m nowhere near perfect, but I stayed as real as I could be. 

With my surfing, I worked hard on what I needed to work on. I loved doing airs when I was a kid, but I was getting hurt too much. Some people say ‘What if you had the airs, would you have done better?’ But when I got on tour, you didn’t need that to be top 10 in the world. It was a choice, you know. I knew my strength was barreling waves. I was happy with how I got into more powerful surfing and trained my ass off to get there. So yeah, no regrets. I think I got the best out of my ability. 

Well, you won four events. Which was your favorite? 
Winning Pipe Masters is crazy for the prestige. It’s an honor, and it’s part of history. No matter what happens, I’ll have my name next to all these legendary names, and nobody can take that away from me. But my favorite win was the Pro France. That event used to really mess with my head. It meant a lot to me, but I always did terrible. To finally win it on my last real year on tour, in front of my family, my friends, all the people that had my back since day 1… it was special. Especially with pumping waves and a thousand people on the beach. To me, it felt like something you’d see in a movie. I’ll remember that for the rest of my life. 

Were you tempted to retire at that point? 
Yeah, I was tempted. The tour is a good life, but I wanted to be with my family more. In the last few years, it was purely financial — like, this is my job and I never went to school, so I felt like I had to keep grinding and make money to provide for my family. That said, there’s nothing better than being out with only one other person in firing waves at a world-class destination. So many places are overcrowded now. Surfing Pipe in a one-on-one heat is priceless. 

What was the most challenging stretch of your career? 
I had a burnout when I was around 24 or 25. 

Ever since I was 13 or 14, I felt like there were a lot of expectations on me. People wanted me to be the first European World Champ, so I put a lot of pressure on myself. I got some good results, but I was never really in the World Title discussion. I put so much energy into getting to that level, but it wasn’t enough. It was enough to compete, but not enough to properly contend. After all that energy and sacrifice, I felt like I needed to let go. I started partying really hard and, all of the sudden, I felt this burnout creeping in. 

It’s weird because you hear people talk about it, and I almost didn’t even believe it — like, how could that be possible? Surfing is the best thing in the world. But it happened to me. As weird as this sounds, and as dreamy as the tour life is, when you’re caught in the middle of all that pressure, all those results, all those people looking at you and talking about you, it’s hard to deal with. When I started partying hard, there were a lot of downsides that made it even tougher to deal with my issues. I was freaking out, I was losing it at the judges, I was losing it at everybody. I wasn’t acting like myself anymore. 

If you ask people who know me well, they’ll tell you I’ve always been super respectful and had my family and friends’ backs. But the pressure got to me. I felt like some people wanted me to be a world champ, but it wasn’t even something I wanted. I was happy with how things were going, happy just to be among the world’s best. Then I started thinking maybe I did want more, and my mind started mixing up. I couldn’t deal with it and that came out in weird ways. It was dark. 

What helped you get through it? 
It’s simple. My dad pulled me aside and was like, “Jeremy, we come from nothing. All the hard work you’ve done since you were a kid, the dream you had to get here, you’re just going to throw it away? Just because you’re having a little burnout?” And it just made sense to me. I was like ‘OK, I gotta toughen up and push through.’ Without surfing and the opportunities it gave me, my life would have been so much different. I tried to balance doing my job with connecting with my loved ones and enjoying life in a more normal way. It took a while, but I finally got there. 

I’ve read a lot of books about athletes in other sports and it seems like, to be really successful, you have to be selfish. I wasn’t a world champion, but I feel like I had my own little version of that. When I was trying my hardest to be successful, I was definitely selfish and shut myself off from people. It took me a while to understand that, but once I did, it helped me get through it. 

It’s wild that some people think your life is perfect just because you get to surf for a job. 
Well, surfing is the best thing in the world. It will always be my passion, and I’ll be doing it forever. But no matter how core your sport is, there’s still all that pressure and media and points and rankings. It’s tough. All that gets to your head. If you’re not strong enough, it’ll eat you up. We’ve seen a lot of people with crazy potential fall to it. It’s a real thing. I went through it, and I’m happy I got to the other side. 

What makes you feel that surfing is the best thing in the world? 
My dad put me in the water before I could even swim. It’s a natural thing, I can’t live without riding a wave. No matter how bad of a day you have, it’s like pressing the reset button when you go in the water. The ocean is such a humbling place, and it restarts your whole brain. Plus, every time I felt cocky, it put me in my place. The power of the ocean is crazy. We’re so lucky to have it. 

Every time you surf — whether you’re a professional or somebody who surfs every now and then — it makes you a better person. Sometimes when I was on that dark road, I’d go in the ocean and it felt spiritual, like ‘This is what I need right now.’ It’s hard to explain, but I think a lot of people can relate to that experience. 

In the first year of your competitive career, you competed in a renegade 44-person party tour. In your last year on tour, you competed in the Olympics. What do you think about that? 
There’s a lot of debate about whether or not surfing should even be an Olympic sport. Personally, I chose to take a competitive approach to surfing. That’s my thing. So as a professional athlete, I want to be in the biggest sporting event in the world. But at the same time, I understand that surfing is completely different for a lot of people. Freesurfing, going on adventures, having fun — that’s the real essence of surfing, so I get why there’s debate. 

It was a crazy experience to be a part of. After all the work I’ve put in throughout my life, it was cool to get that recognition. I guess it’s a cool story that I can tell my kids. 

Did you get emotional? 
Not really — I get emotional when the waves are pumping. In Japan, the waves were so average. Going into the Olympic Village and seeing athletes from all over the world, it was wild to be part of that energy. You’re wearing your country’s outfit, and you might even see someone who recognizes you like ‘Oh, you’re the surfer’ which is cool. I’ve never been part of anything like it. That was the strongest moment for me. 

But I didn’t feel anything special actually competing in the event, especially with no crowds and all the Covid restrictions. I don’t think it would have been really exciting for people who were watching surfing for the first time, too, which is a shame. People will discover the beauty of our sport at Teahupo’o in 2024. 

We talked about the most difficult stretch of your competitive career. What was the best? 
I think it was the last full year, 2019. I’d just become a dad and I was traveling with my family and a lot of pieces came together. I was happy with how I was surfing, I wasn’t putting too much pressure on myself, I was going with the flow and enjoying it. I just felt happy. Being a dad and getting to experience that life with my kid was great. When I won France, my daughter was on the beach and it was such a proud moment. 

Early in my career, there were times where I was surfing good waves, winning heats, partying, and it was a great time. Then I had that burnout and there was the wild Jeremy — freaking out on people and everything. There was a moment when it seemed like I was fighting all the time, whinging all the time, and being wild in many ways. I’m proud of getting through that and improving myself. 

But the last few years were the best. I’ve just focused on being a good dad and more of a role model, trying to show a positive image for myself and surfing. I’m proud of what I became, proud of getting through my hard times, and proud of my evolution. I felt at peace with myself and I was enjoying life with my loved ones. 

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What’s next? 
Man, I feel like all the tension is gone. I have a lot of ideas and projects. I might make a movie with Quiksilver. I don’t really like to talk about myself, but if I can send a positive message and show how real things can get in surfing, I’ll do it. My wife is from Tahiti, so I’ll be based here. The CT schedule is so intense, and you don’t have time for other trips. Now I can finally go wherever I want, whenever I want, which hasn’t been the case for so long. I want to try all these waves that I’ve never been able to surf, maybe even something totally different like Iceland. I’m excited to get on some different boards, too. I told JS I want to be the test pilot for anything. Big, small, wide, fins, whatever, I’m down.