When French longboarder Zoe Grospiron had her best year on tour in 2024, she felt nothing. She won her first Longboard Qualifying Series event and made her first World Longboard Tour final, finishing sixth in the world. But when she knew she should have been the happiest she’d ever been, the high just didn’t come.

So in 2025, instead of returning to tour, she took a pause to recalibrate her relationship to surfing. Grospiron grew up in the French Alps, becoming a competitive skier from as young as seven. After she moved to Biarritz as a teenager and started to surf, within a few years she was competing in that too.…