After winning the gold medal in the first-ever Olympic surfing event on July, “The first person I wanted to speak with was Luke, my husband,” Hawaii’s Carissa Kainani Moore said next day in a phone interview from Tokyo as she prepared to fly home.
“I got through to him pretty quick” by phone, she said of Luke Untermann, who stayed in Honolulu because of Japan’s restrictions.
“I had a lot of love and support here on the ground from my teammates and Brett (Simpson, the Olympic surf team coach), but not my normal crew, Luke or my dad,” Moore said, “so even being able to calm myself down, definitely meant a lot!”
On finals day, the typhoon-driven Tsurigasaki beach surf “was mentally and physically very exhausting, some of the most challenging conditions I’d ever encountered in competition — a real storm, big waves, difficult to figure out,” said the four-time world champion.
But Moore added she also felt energized and stoked because she loves surfing and the ocean and “there is something really special about competing for your nation, your home, on finals day.”
Thanking all who’d supported her, in person and remotely, the 28-year-old Hawaiian said she hoped her medal would help inspire young girls to believe in themselves and pursue their dreams. She noted that she was inspired herself by the memory of Hawaii’s surf pioneers, especially the great waterman and first Hawaiian Olympic medalist, Duke Kahanamoku.
According to the International Surfing Association, after Kahanamoku won his first of three gold medals for swimming, in the 100 meters at the 1912 Olympics, he expressed the hope that surfing would become an Olympic sport.
“I’ve always known of Duke, and that he’s been our ambassador of aloha, but I didn’t understand what that meant,” Moore said, “until I watched a documentary about him (the forthcoming “The Waterman” by Isaac Halasima for Sidewinder Films).
“It was very eye-opening, the way Duke shared surfing, shared his heart with people unconditionally; it made me proud and honored to be going to the Olympics and living out his dream, a really nice full circle moment.”
It was also poignant, for while Kahanamoku in his lifetime was revered as a five-time Olympic medalist and the father of modern surfing, he also encountered racism and struggled financially, according to David Davis, author of “Waterman: The Life and Times of Duke Kahanamoku.”
“Duke’s Olympic triumph turned him into the face of the Territory (of Hawaii),” Davis wrote last month in The Hawaii Review of Books. “His handsome visage and chiseled body were splashed on magazine covers, business leaders sponsored his travels to Australia and to the mainland, ostensibly so that he could compete in major international swim meets,” but also “to promote the Territory’s nascent tourism industry.”
Kahanamoku was dependant on these sponsorships because, “in the amateur-only days of Olympic sport, he was not allowed to monetize his athletic skills or fame,” Davis wrote.
But through his travels, exhibitions and promotion of surfing competitions, Kahanamoku created opportunities for the next generation of Hawaii surf pioneers, who gave back to young surfers in their turn.
Our female pioneers include Ethel Kukea, winner of the first Makaha Invitational Surf Contest in 1956; Betty Heldreich Winstedt, winner of the first International Surfing Meet in Lima, Peru, in 1957, and her daughter Vicky Heldreich Durand, who won the Makaha contest in 1957 and wrote her mother’s biography, “Wave Woman: The Life and Struggles of a Surfing Pioneer.”
Others followed, including Joey Hamasaki, who blazed trails on the mainland by winning the 1966 Malibu Invitational and the 1967 East Coast Surfing Championships; Rell Sunn, the Queen of Makaha who supported keiki and women surfers; North Shore native and big wave charger Megan Abubo; famed Pipeline tube rider and women’s surfing advocate Rochelle Ballard; big-wave champions Keala Kennelly and Paige Alms, who with the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing won parity of prize money with men; and Moore, who founded a nonprofit, Moore Aloha, to help girl surfers.
After a few days at home, Moore will fly to the next stop on the Championship Tour for the Corona Open Mexico (Aug. 10-19) in Barra de la Cruz, “a really fun point break, with a sand bottom,” Moore said.
Sadly, Moore’s U.S. Olympic teammate and fellow Oahu native John John Florence, who was defeated in the third round by teammate Kolohe Andino, has withdrawn from the remainder of this year’s tour because he hasn’t healed 100% from knee surgery.
“The opportunity to surf in Tokyo was once in a lifetime, and a risk I was willing to take,” the two-time world champ said.
Next comes the Outerknown Tahiti Pro (Aug. 24-Sept. 3) at Teahupoo, once deemed too dangerous for women, and then the tour’s last event, a surf-off in the Rip Curl WSL Finals at Lower Trestles (Sept. 9-17) in San Clemente, Calif., in which Moore and Brazil’s Gabriel Medina are the only surfers currently assured a place in the five-surfer men’s and women’s heats.
It will be especially exciting to watch Moore after her liberating, game-changing Olympic win.
“I think in every event as time goes on, I’m learning how to not stress out so much and really be in tune with the ocean, and that’s where I’m starting to surf from, a place of joy and happiness and just love for what I’m doing,” she said.
She praised her Olympic competitors: “I have the utmost respect for Bianca (Buitendag, silver medalist) and Amuro Tsuzuki (bronze),” Moore said, “and just want to acknowledge all the athletes who came to the Games — it was not an easy competition, and each one of us showed up and tried to put our best foot forward.”
And, showing her ambassadorial chops, she offered a vision: “It was really cool to see South Africa to my right and Japan to my left (on the Olympic medal stage), showing how the ocean connects us all, and the beautiful diversity among women who are strong all over the world.”
Asked how she planned to celebrate when she got home, Moore said she was hoping for a simple family barbecue on the beach.
