Kanoa Igarashi (born October 1, 1997) is a Japanese American surfer who has competed professionally worldwide since 2012. In 2016, he was the youngest rookie on the World Surf League (WSL) Championship Tour (CT), and had collected more Round One wins than any other surfer, finished 2nd place at the Pipeline event, and 20th place overall that year. His greatest career performance was in the 2022 WSL CT where he finished top 5 and got to compete on the final event of the year held in

Trestles ATLAS-I (Air Force Weapons Lab Transmission-Line Aircraft Simulator), better known as Trestle, was a unique electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generation and testing apparatus built between 1972 and 1980 during the Cold War at Sandia National Labora ...

California.

Childhood

Igarashi's father Tsutomu was a surfer in Japan and an avid fan of the sport himself. When his wife Misa found out she was pregnant, the couple quit their jobs in Tokyo and moved to

Huntington Beach, California Huntington Beach is a seaside city in Orange County, California, Orange County in Southern California, located southeast of Downtown Los Angeles. The city is named after American businessman Henry E. Huntington. The population was 198,711 duri ...

, aka Surf City, with the goal of raising their child to be a competitive surfer. Tsutomu took his son surfing as young as age 3, and would routinely wake him up to go surfing by 5:45AM so he could still make it to school on time. Igarashi won his first surfing trophy by age 7.

Career

In 2016 he entered as the youngest rookie to the WSL CT and the first representative surfer for Japan in the WSL. He won the Vans U.S. Open WSL event in his hometown of Huntington Beach two years in a row in 2017 and 2018, but was eliminated early the following year. Igarashi's first 1st-place finish at a WSL CT event was at the Corona Bali Protected event in Indonesia in 2019; he placed 6th overall that year. As a top ranked finisher of the 2019 WSL CT, Igarashi qualified to compete in the

2020 Summer Olympic Games The , officially the and also known as , was an international multi-sport event held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some preliminary events that began on 21 July. Tokyo was selected as the host city during the 1 ...

in Tokyo as a representative of

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. The games were postponed to July 23, 2021, due to the 2019 coronavirus outbreak. The selected beach break for the competition was at Tsurigasaki beach in the town of

Ichinomiya is a Japanese historical term referring to the Shinto shrines with the highest rank in a province. Shrines of lower rank were designated , , , and so forth. ''Encyclopedia of Shinto'' ''Ichi no miya'' retrieved 2013-5-14. The term gave rise t ...

Chiba Chiba may refer to: Places China * (), town in Jianli County, Jingzhou, Hubei Japan * Chiba (city), capital of Chiba Prefecture ** Chiba Station, a train station * Chiba Prefecture, a sub-national jurisdiction in the Greater Tokyo Area on ...

prefecture. The chosen beach had special meaning to Igarashi as it was the same beach that his father Tsutomu not only surfed at, but also reportedly discovered with his friends and called "the Dojo". Igarashi won the silver medal in the competition. Igarashi is
Red Bull Athlete

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Igarashi, Kanoa American surfers Japanese surfers World Surf League surfers 1997 births Living people Sportspeople from Huntington Beach, California Olympic surfers of Japan Surfers at the 2020 Summer Olympics American sportspeople of Japanese descent Olympic silver medalists for Japan Medalists at the 2020 Summer Olympics Olympic medalists in surfing