Igarashi at his first Championship Tour victory in Bali in May.
Photographer: Ryan Miller
The Non-Stop, Endorsement-Packed Life of Japan’s Surfing Superstar
Kanoa Igarashi, who declared that he’ll surf for Japan in next year’s Olympics, was groomed for this.
The September sun was starting to set over Tokyo—prime surfing hours at the beaches in nearby Shonan—when Kanoa Igarashi, Japan’s most famous wave rider, dragged himself and his entourage into the Harajuku showroom of Quiksilver Inc., one of his sponsors.
It had been a whirlwind 48-hour promotional blitz. He’d flown 5,000 miles from Surf Ranch, the mechanical wave pool that Kelly Slater built in Southern California’s inland valley, where Igarashi had spent nine hours getting filmed carving one perfect, machine-made tube after another, then having his blood tested for lactic acid levels.