Photo: Kanoa Igarashi // YouTube
It’s relatively rare to see Kanoa Igarashi out of a jersey, but he’s looking to change that. The latest YouTube video from the Championship Tour surfer and Olympian is part of a series in which he gives audiences a peek behind the curtain at his best freesurfs and adventures throughout the year. The latest one starts with a disappointing session in Portugal, that quickly pivots to greatness when Igarashi and company hop on the next flight to Basque Country for a session at the Wavegarden Lab.
The facility is unique, even in the emerging world of artificial waves. What was once the original prototype for the Wavegarden Cove system has been transformed into a sort of testing facility, where waves and design features are put through their paces before making it out to the general public. “It’s one of the coolest things right now in surfing,”explained Igarashi. “It’s a controlled environment, so I have this to myself today and get to test out the new waves that they have going on.”
Though we’ve come to expect an aerial display when pros gets a crack at finely-tuned artificial waves, one of the tricks Kanoa pulled off shocked even him. “I never thought in my life I would do a backflip,” he said afterwards, processing what just happened in the water. “Not surfing, in general. I never thought I would do a backflip in my life. I never even tried one in the ocean. I never even thought about it.”
