IGARASHI Kanoa

Preferred stance
Regular (worldsurfleague.com, 13 Apr 2019)

General
REPRESENTING JAPAN
He was born and raised in the United States of America, and represented his country of birth at junior level. In 2018 he switched to represent Japan to honour his parents' heritage. "Growing up in Huntington Beach and surfing through the amateur and professional systems here has made me who I am as a surfer. I have so much support here in the USA and America will always be part of who I am. [But] I've grown up with a lifestyle and in a generation where things can seem a bit borderless. And so representing Japan felt like a solid, comfortable decision. My blood is 100 percent Japanese. That's something that you don't change." His father Tsutomu 'Tom' and mother Misa, originally moved to Huntington Beach, CA, in 1995 because his father was a surfer and wanted to raise a family in a good environment for the sport. (bloomberg.com, 26 Sep 2019; sankei.com, 27 Sep 2019; projectdesign.jp, May 2019; surfnews.jp, 27 Apr 2018; asahi.com, 07 Jul 2019; stabmag.com, 01 Jun 2019; redbull.com, 24 Apr 2020)

FATHER'S BREAK
His father grew up surfing the Tsurigasaki beach break in Ichinomiya, Chiba prefecture, where the surfing competition for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo is to be held. "He and his friends discovered that wave. They climbed through fences and hiked through the grass to find this wave, and they called it the Dojo, and it was their little secret spot. And it's definitely a very emotional, special connection for him - a wave that he discovered is where his son will compete at the Olympics for the first time. It's such a crazy, full circle. It's definitely a wave that suits my surfing. It's technical and precise. It's just in my blood, being Japanese, to be precise and technically sound. Every little arm movement and movement will make a big difference and there will be little room for error. And the break is really close to the beach, close to the fans. I've always been kind of a show-off. I want people to be close. I want people to feel it. I want to see people's faces and that's when I shine." (redbull.com, 24 Apr 2020)

EXTENDED FAMILY
His extended family live in Japan, and he has gained celebrity status in Japan following regular appearances on Japanese television shows. "When I first started appearing on TV over here in Japan, I was the Japanese kid growing up in America, doing well in contests, and that's when I really started feeling that I had a lot of Japanese supporters and I really started to feel the Japanese inside of me start to become stronger. My grandma [in Japan] told me, 'All I want to do is stay alive until the Olympics, and after that I don't care if I die'. And I was like, 'What? Don't say that.' But she said, 'I've gone through a lot in my life. I've done everything that I wanted to do. But once the Olympics were announced and you told me that you were going to be in it, that's the last thing on my bucket list. Then my life will be complete.' I feel very privileged and honoured to just have them be so proud of me. It makes me want to do my best." (surfnews.jp, 18 Feb 2020; redbull.com, 24 Apr 2020)

IMPORTANCE OF OLYMPICS
He has said that representing Japan at the Olympic Games and winning a gold medal would be more significant than winning multiple world tour titles. "Whether I win or lose, the Olympics are the biggest opportunity I'll ever have in my life. It [winning Olympic gold] will be worth more than winning 15 world titles, and more attainable too, because it's obviously only one contest. Plus, for all we know, it could be the first and last one ever. The thing is, so many people have won world titles. I'm not talking down on them, I've obviously trained my whole career to win a world title, but a gold medal in surfing is different. It's unique. No one has it. So I think for me, I'd rather win a gold medal just because of how everything has aligned. It almost feels like it was made for me." (stabmag.com, 01 Jun 2019)

NAME
His

In 2019 he became the first Japanese surfer to win an event on the World Surf League Championship Tour, when he claimed victory at the 2019 Bali Protected in Keramas, Indonesia. (worldsurfleague.com, 13 Apr 2019; surfnews.jp, 22 Nov 2019; sports.yahoo.co.jp, 09 Dec 2019)