Kanoa Igarashi has been part of two unique judging situations on this year’s Championship Tour schedule and we’re not even halfway through the year. First up, Igarashi watched from the sidelines of the Surf Abu Dhabi Pro back in February when Filipe Toledo ran into a cameraman. When the WSL decided Toledo wouldn’t get to re-surf his final wave in that heat, Igarashi moved on to the quarterfinals.
He was on the other side of a “weird rule” scenario in El Salvador, however, that allowed Crosby Colapinto to move on from their Round of 32 matchup. Taking one last wave under second priority as the clock approached double zeros, Colapinto trailed Igarashi on the judges’ scorecards. Igarashi did what most surfers would do in that moment and used his priority to block Colapinto and shut down any chance at a Hail Mary score…only he got to his feet after the buzzer and was given an interference as a result. The technicality cost Igarashi his second wave score and sent him out of the event with an early exit.
“I thought with two minutes left he could get a wave and I’d go in, kick out, and get the second one,” he told his coach Jake Patterson after the loss. But when the heat closed to within one final minute, Igarashi says he realized he could just sit even further down the point and would only have to use his priority to block Colapinto once.
“That’s a 35-minute heat (that) came down to one second,” Patterson said of how close the strategy was to working.
If you assumed Igarashi went back to the locker room and stomped on a few boards in the aftermath, you were wrong. Maybe he was in disbelief, but Kanoa seemed like all he could do after the decision was shrug it off and throw in the occasional chuckle. It’s definitely a different reaction from the outbursts of a lot of other pro surfers when a call goes against them.
“It happens,” he said, recapping the heat in the airport. “That was a really confusing heat, but we’re on to the next one.”
