Kanoa Igarashi is a departure from the old Spicoli stereotype of surfers decades ago. If anything, he might be the most clear example of how far the sport has come in a professional sense. He’s a serious athlete who takes every aspect of his profession…well, seriously.
“Him and Leo (Fioravanti), honestly, They taught me how to love this whole tour thing,” Zeke Lau once told me, describing Igarashi as an athlete fully consumed by his pursuit of a world title. “We call him a frickin’ super computer because he’s able to calculate things — the way he makes decisions — everything is to win. It’s that Michael Jordan-like, energy.”
The approach even extends to how Igarashi approached this year by using 2023 to test out new equipment and change his routines, thinking a full calendar year ahead of a 2024 that would include both the CT and the Olympics.
“I’d decided to try a load of new approaches with my surfing, as a way to get better, so it was a big experimental year for me,” he told Ben Mondy. “I discovered some things that worked, and a lot that didn’t. The results weren’t where I wanted them to be, but it was easily the biggest growth year of my career.”
From Lau’s perspective, Igarashi’s ability grew in leaps and bounds because he was all business while guys like himself, Fioravanti, and Jack Robinson were all coming up together. As he described it, Kanoa was making intentional decisions on things like board changes to test how he might gain or lose an advantage while the rest of the crew was running on talent still.
“To see how fast he got better at surfing was insane.”
Igarashi’s been on the pro surfer vlog wave this year and while his life isn’t entirely consumed by competing, competing, and more competing, the glimpses of him working with Jake Patterson give a sense of that picture Zeke Lau painted (Granted, plenty of CT athletes sit and recap heats with personal coaches but you get the picture). But the man isn’t a machine. He has friends and a social life and can soak up some downtime on lay days like anybody else. Then again, he’s a professional athlete so even a day on the golf course is something worth turning into a bit of friendly competition.
