A spirited defence of the world number two…

In 2010 Kanoa Igarashi went to France for the first time. He was 12 then, just about to turn 13 and the waves pumped every day of his trip.

I was there filming and chaperoning for Quiksilver and I’ve never seen the banks as good as they were that year. Kanoa was small for his age, but maybe up for it with incredible technique in small waves.

He put on a full mini-shred tube and air show on a small dreamy day in offshore beachbreak. When it was six foot, though, he looked out of sorts. Leo Fioravanti and Mikey Wright found a spot they liked one morning and sprinted through the thick, grainy sand to get after it.

They were pulling into stand-0up barrels within a minute of paddling out. Kanoa, on the other hand, sat on the beach and looked scared. He was a nice, friendly kid and I didn’t want to give him a hard time. I said, “Look you’re definitely more than good enough to surf waves like that, but if you don’t want to today it’s ok. But if you do go out and get a barrel then Leo and Mikey won’t be able to give you any shit.”

Eventually, he paddled out, took off on the shoulder of a couple waves and came back in. Leo and Mikey of course teased him mercilessly afterwards as kids do, but I gave him credit for at least giving it a go.

Kanoa is 21 now and I give him huge props him his first win in Bali. It’s honestly hard now though for me to see the amount of shit he’s still copping, maybe not from his peers, but from random people online. In some ways I get it, the bleached hair, gold chains, odd social media posts, the claims, surfing for Japan, the awkward celebrations, they aren’t things that tend to inspire core American or Australian surfers.

If people think Kanoa’s a typical spoiled So-Cal rich kid, as some comments have stated, they’re flat-out wrong. Kanoa’s parents are Japanese immigrants who came to the USA with nothing because they wanted to raise Kanoa to be a professional surfer.

I don’t really know him that well anymore, but I think he’s just trying to figure out who he is and is trying out some things along the way. Who out there had a rock solid sense of their identity at 21? I sure didn’t.

I also didn’t grow up the way he did. If people think he’s a typical spoiled So-Cal rich kid, as some comments have stated, they’re flat-out wrong. Kanoa’s parents are Japanese immigrants who came to the USA with nothing because they wanted to raise Kanoa to be a professional surfer.

And not just any professional surfer, a world champion professional surfer. They spoke little to no English and worked low-paying jobs to survive. They moved from LA, which has a large Japanese community to Huntington Beach, which doesn’t really have one at all, so Kanoa could learn to surf in an area with decent waves and a strong surf culture.

Having the pressure of your parents dreams for you put squarely your small shoulders isn’t easy for anyone, but it was especially challenging for a Nisei (second generation) kid like Kanoa. English was his second language but from the time he could speak a lick of our native tongue he was his parents’ link to the outside American world.

Imagine trying to explain things like sponsorships and contracts to your parents in another language when you’re 10. Think about how bewildering it was for his parents too. I went to Japan last year and never felt as lost as a did when I got outside of Tokyo. I became functionally illiterate. The street signs and restaurant menus were unintelligible to me. Even the prices were written in characters and not in numerals. Anyone coming from Japan to the West experiences the same disorientation in reverse.

Kanoa qualified for the world tour at 18 on the strength of his beachbreak QS game. With the precision of a Japanese technician, he figured out a way to frame his turns so they threw maximum spray and compensated for how small and light he still was. If you watch his round three heat in the 2017 event at J-Bay against Mick Fanning you’ll see a boy trying hard to compete against a man.

Despite the inherent physical disadvantage he had in every event, he managed to avoid going down in the losers round for the entire year. He then showed his potential in hollow waves by taking second at the Pipe Masters in small Backdoor runners.

A growth spurt and three years of heavy training have now gotten him to a point where he’s ready for anyone. He’s always surfed fast and with a clean, smooth style, but I feel like he’s been holding back in heats.

If he’d spent the last three years filming a signature film the way Dane and Julian did when they were his age, rather than taking his lumps on tour, we’d probably have a totally different perception of him.

He never puts out edits and we’ve seen anything close to his full potential on a webcast.

Watch his Round of 32 heat again in Bali for a glimpse of the rail/air combo game he’s holding. Now that he’s second in the world and ahead of freaks like Filipe, Italo and Gabriel, I’m hoping now is the time when he shows his full deck of cards.

Omedetou

Good job, kid.

"Like yoga blocks for your board!"

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And Pip Toledo and Kelly Slater quarter-final exceeds the insane hype!

Japan steals California’s first CT event victory in ten years at Keramas when 21-year-old Igarashi Kanoa from Huntington Beach wins the Bali Protected pro in perfect four-to-six-foot surf.

Steph Gilmore wins her 30th (!) event in a totally dominant display that would have won the men’s final.

Kelly Slater makes the whole world forget about climate change and the extinction crisis by defeating Filipe Toledo in a quarter-final that, for the first time in the history of pro surfing, totally eclipsed the hype.

It took a while to warm up.

Seemed during an uneventful last women’s QF and the first two men’s QF’s that the WSL had again, like they did at D-Bah, tried to squeeze too much into the event window. Two entire CT events, a mens and a womens and an airshow as well.

Just like he did at Bells, though, KP managed to find a golden pot at the end of a very long rainbow. It came to fruition in the Kelly-Filipe super heat. Pip was flippant in the pre-heat interview. In mock horror he said about Kelly “Oohh, he’s scary” and that it was good to see him “back on the fire”.

It’s almost insane. Who remembers a single thing from the first two rounds? Nobody!

Just like he did at Bells, though, KP managed to find a golden pot at the end of a very long rainbow. It came to fruition in the Kelly-Filipe super heat. Pip was flippant in the pre-heat interview. In mock horror he said about Kelly “Oohh, he’s scary” and that it was good to see him “back on the fire”.

Too flippant, as it turned out.

Kelly sold him the first wave. A scoreless close-out.

Kelly needed to win the opening exchange, and he did. The roundhouse-cutback-to-foam-rebound would be practically extinct at the elite level if not for Kelly. After the first scoring waves he opened a two-point spread on FT.

Two near makes from Kelly would have been ten-point rides apiece.

Messy, slabby, insanely technical tube rides with styled out roundhouses, Kelly playing matador with angry knuckles of foam, saw him in the lead with 10 to go.

Filipe was looking wobbly.

Pottz accused him of getting sucked into Kelly’s game, trying to out-tube him in a tube-riding duel.

But what choice did he have? What was he going to do, dodge the tube? And walk straight into Kelly’s verbal trap of being the best small-wave surfer ever? Kelly pricked his pride and Filipe’s pride fucked him over.

The sunshine and slabby tubes, the drained-out end section made Keramas look like Soup Bowls, one of Kelly’s favoured haunts.

Pip went over the falls selling Kelly on a lemon. Kelly gave it back to Toledo and he pin-dropped out of the lip of a close-out. With clock pressure and scoreboard pressure mounting there was a failure to communicate from Dickie on the beach to Filipe in the water.

He whistled him off an open face that could have been the score. Toledo looked fragile and confused. The clock ticked down and on the buzzer Filipe caught a wave.

“I saw him take off and thought, what’s he going to do,” said Kelly. Then I heard the board snap.”

Done. Kelly in the semi.

I went to see Momentum Generation last month. Went in a hater and came out all loved-up on Kelly. Meant to ask him something abrasive and ended up thanking him for 27 years of entertainment, joy and inspiration.

God, he brought it today.

We will note at this juncture that judges had held the scoring scale steady and maintained the low ball, and we will note that headroom in surf that was becoming groomed by incoming tide and slack winds was justified.

Kanoa overcame Kolohe with the turn he had perfected all event, the vertical lip punch with a tail drift.
Steph looked silky but very restrained in overcoming a Nikki Van Dyke whose skill set and experience did not look up to the challenge.

Earlier in the event Jez Flores had given the clue to his ultimate motivation.

“Everywhere is so crowded, ” he said. “To get the chance to surf these waves with one other guy is the reason I’m still doing it”.

He began to feast on Balinese tubes like a fat man at a breakfast buffet. Gorging himself until it was almost insulting to M-Rod. Judges had paid the tube all event. They paid it for Jezza. The anger drained out him, visibly.

The trash talking before Kanoa and Kelly’s semi-final had become a little cartoonish, devoid of the genuine psychological barbs Kelly had aimed at Filipe.

I mean, how could you trash talk Kanoa?

What an extraordinary time it all of a sudden seemed. Like Krymov the tank commander felt during the Battle for Stalingrad in Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate it was as if history had left the pages of books and come to life. Kelly caught the opening wave on the hooter and sought and found shade in a clean cabana. Kanoa fell and fell and fell.

One more clean cut and Kelly could have put him in a deep combo. He did not. A very long deep technical tube ended when the cavern collapsed on him.

It was halfway through before Kanoa put a wave on the scoreboard. It was the most critical piece of judging of the contest. All through the contest judges had recalibrated scoring between men and women.

Highballing tail-based fin turns by women if they were well-timed and in the pocket. Chief beneficiary being Brisa Hennesy.

In a flash, they bought the same recalibration to bear on Kanoa’s wave. The turns were weak and fin based but awarded a 7.67.

Kelly flubbed a turn between a double tube for a 7.17 and unable to back down the panel went big again for Kanoa’s second scoring ride.

Winners are grinners.

Kanoa thanked the “People who talked trash about him” in the seconds after he won the comp. There will be no need to go back and analyse turns that, based on the scale so far this year, would have been judged fair.

Jordy Smith, in a righteous universe, would be entitled to drop kick a rabid dog in an alleyway.

The contrast between men’s and women’s surfing which had so far looked acute and almost embarrassing to the detriment of the ladies was suddenly reversed. Steph Gilmore’s opening turns had flow and elegant power and unlike the punch and release of Igarashi were arced all the way back against the grain. She was in cruise control mode, by her own admission, before coming to a conclusion that she wanted an excellent number.

The wave she rode next was adjudged perfect. Go look at it on heat analyzer if you missed it. You won’t get the impact of watching it live. Appreciate the hard tube stall snap and the immense pressure of the final hit which buckled her knee flat to the deck. Best wave of the comp.

A little air wind had puffed up for the final.

You could imagine the damage Filipe would have done to the lineup had he been there. Locked into the new scoring paradigm judges gave a floater and three regulation turns by Kanoa one of the highest scores of the event. I hate that “you can script this” conspiracy thinking but it did seem like objectivity was being torched and sent into the atmosphere.

Jeremy tore into a set wave. It was the best wave of the final.

You could imagine the damage Filipe would have done to the lineup had he been there. Locked into the new scoring paradigm judges gave a floater and three regulation turns by Kanoa one of the highest scores of the event. I hate that “you can script this” conspiracy thinking but it did seem like objectivity was being torched and sent into the atmosphere.

I saw it. Pottz saw it.

Even one judge saw it and gave it a 9.5. A lowball from another meant it sat lower than Kanoa’s 9.1.

When Jeremy went straight on a closeout with 11 minutes to go and handed priority back to Kanoa it was all over.

Twenty one years old. Wow. It feels like Kanoa has been on Tour for ever.

Second in the World. Kelly in the Top Ten. One spot ahead of Gabe Medina. Totally mad.

Kelly is making this year a real pleasure. I feel ashamed for casting aspersions on the credibility of the injury wildcard they gave him.