The top Americans will be sharing a house, which means they will be competitors on the water and roommates between sessions. The generational junction could see Carissa Moore, largely regarded as the best woman ever to ride a wave, taking a seat at the breakfast table across from Caitlin Simmers, the 18-year-old who’s poised to take the torch from Moore and lift the sport to new heights.

“I’m going to be sleeping next door to the person that wants to beat me,” Moore said with a chuckle, “and vice versa.”

Moore, 31, made waves this year when she announced she was stepping away from the pro tour to focus on the Olympics, hoping to defend her title from Tokyo. Saying she wants to explore other opportunities and spend more time with family, Moore hasn’t decided whether she will resume competitive surfing at the conclusion of the Games. And while these Olympics could represent a final shot at glory for Moore, they’re also a chance for Simmers to charge into the global spotlight.

“She basically is Carissa Moore at 18,” said Joe Turpel, the World Surf League analyst who will be calling the Olympic action for NBC. “… It’s hard not to make comparisons. This is a generational talent that reminds us a lot of how Carissa started taking over the world.”

Lest anyone forget, the third housemate in Tahiti — Caroline Marks, 22 — is the defending world champion and a bridge of sorts between generations. Marks finished fourth at the Tokyo Olympics and finds herself both chasing Moore’s legacy and fending off the hungry younger surfers behind her.

If Moore really does retire — a word she refuses to use — she would be leaving near the top of her game, though she has competed just twice this season. A five-time world champion who has posted 29 wins on the World Surf League’s champions tour, she won three events a year ago, reaching the podium four other times.

“She’s really been someone who is kind of trailblazing in that regard,” said Jessi Miley-Dyer, commissioner of the World Surf League. “She’s someone that kind of really made people redefine what they thought they could do. She made all of these maneuvers just kind of normal for the women to be doing.”

While many in Moore’s generation studied videos of men to learn new tricks and challenge norms, Simmers and the rising crop of teens have grown up with the YouTube exploits of glass-shattering surfers such as Moore, Stephanie Gilmore, Tyler Wright and Lakey Peterson.

“It was a different world,” Moore said. “Even 13 years ago, everyone kind of knew, like, when the winds got bad and the conditions got junky, it was time to send the girls out, you know? But it’s not like that these days. I think there’s definitely more of, ‘Okay, it’s a good day — let’s give everyone a chance.’”

Simmers was 4 years old when Moore made her professional debut in 2010. Her ascent has been both deliberate and meteoric. She won the 2021 U.S. Open of Surfing at 15, helping her earn a spot on the champions tour the following season. But she decided to wait a year to continue her development. As a rookie last year she won two events, and she already has three victories this year. Simmers enters the Olympics as the top-ranked surfer in the world after winning June’s tour stop in Rio de Janeiro.

“As we say in surfing, young surfers and groms, they’re just always so happy all the time. They just want to surf all day long. And she carries that spirit, you know?” Turpel said. “… She handles fear like I’ve never seen before. You can never tell if she is scared of big waves.”

Growing up in Oceanside, Calif., Simmers had no shortage of surf pros to look up. Despite the age gap, she adjusted quickly to competing on tour against some of the elite athletes she had grown up rooting for.

“Carissa could still get a world title,” Simmers said in a recent interview. “She’s still, like, the best surfer in the world.”

But Simmers effectively has entered a different sport. There are more sponsors, more opportunities. Women’s surfing events aren’t staged on a different track than the men’s side, and no one is telling her what she can’t do; instead, people are encouraging her to try new things, to launch into the air, to blast through barrels and to tackle the toughest waves.

“When you think about 18-year-old Carissa vs. 18-year-old Caity, Caity’s coming into a tour that’s fully combined,” Miley-Dyer said. “When you think about equal prize money, that was something Carissa didn’t have when she was growing up. And Caity, it’s all she’ll ever know. So the tour itself has changed a lot.”

These next-gen surfers — teen sensations such as Simmers, Sawyer Lindblad, Bettylou Sakura Johnson and Erin Brooks — are starting to show what is possible, moving the sport from the water to the air with creativity and athleticism.

Whether these Olympics amount to a coronation for Simmers or a well-earned victory lap for Moore, they will face the same test: one of the toughest surf breaks on the planet. Teahupo’o is known as a heavy wave rolling over a shallow coral reef and delivering reliable photo-ready barrels. For even experienced surfers, it is equal parts exhilarating and intimidating.

The competition window opens Saturday and will mark the furthest an Olympic event has been staged from the host city. Tahiti is the largest and most populous island in French Polynesia, and 48 surfers — 24 men, 24 women — will try to tame the powerful wave.

The challenges posed by Teahupo’o are a big reason Moore stepped away from the tour, determined to get more reps there in advance of the Olympics. She wants to win another medal, not simply pass the baton.

“It’s one of those waves that is super critical and intense,” Moore said. “It’s one that really scares me. And I feel like if you spend time being uncomfortable, it gets more comfortable.”

As for what life is like after the Olympics, Moore is noncommittal. She wants to spend more time with family, explore film projects and grow her Moore Aloha Charitable Foundation, a nonprofit focused on young women.

“When I first started surfing, I was sometimes the only girl in the water,” Moore said. “And now I look at my local spot, sometimes there’s more girls than boys in the water. People are just as excited — or more excited — to watch the women than the men, which is super cool. I don’t think I ever saw that coming.”