HONOLULU — In about seven months, Carissa Moore expects to be shredding the daunting waves at Tahiti’s Teahupo’o in her return to Olympic competition.

With that in mind, it will be a busy ramp-up over the first half of 2024 for Moore, the five-time World Surf League women’s champion from Hawaii who begins another WSL Championship Tour season in late January. In the Paris 2024 games in July, she’ll look to defend the gold medal she earned in the first-ever Olympic surfing competition at Tokyo 2020.

What You Need To Know

  • Through her foundation Moore Aloha, Hawaii-born world champion surfer Carissa Moore put on a Japan-U.S. Global Exchange event this week for youths from Makinohara in Shizuoka Prefecture as a thank you to the region for its hospitality during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics

  • Activities for the seven boys and seven girls included surfing, hula, lei-making and a dinner at Moore's house

  • Moore, a five-time WSL women's world champion, is readying for the next Championship Tour starting with the Lexus Pipe Pro on Oahu's North Shore in late January

  • Moore, the first women's surfing gold medalist in Olympic history, has already qualified for the Paris 2024 games with competition to be held in Tahiti in July

But Moore, 31, has priorities beyond wave scores and trophies, as she displayed again this week with a cultural exchange program with Japan through her Moore Aloha foundation. Moore, with the support of more than a dozen sponsors, welcomed 14 children and a few dignitaries from the city of Makinohara, in Shizuoka Prefecture about halfway between Tokyo and Osaka, for activities like surfing, hula, lei-making and a beach clean-up over three-plus days on Oahu.

“It was a quick trip but I hope we packed in a lot,” Moore told Spectrum News on Friday. “My whole dream and mission is that they learned a lot and are able to take this new perspective and share the aloha spirit with them in their own lives, the people that they meet.”

The finale of the Japan-U.S. Global Exchange was a group photo with Moore in front of the towering mural bearing her likeness and that of Hawaii surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku, an Olympic gold medalist in swimming, near the corner of South King Street and Pensacola Avenue. Moore is grateful for the 150-foot piece by artist Kamea Hadar but still considers it “a bit intimidating and overwhelming” a few years after it went up. Still, she looks for it in the distance whenever she takes the H-1 eastbound, because, she figures, one never knows when something like that will go away.

The children – seven boys and seven girls between 10 and 16 – seemed to get the idea before they were shuttled off to the airport for their flight home. They flashed shakas and smiles while sporting Moore Aloha shirts.

The trip was more than a year in the making. It began with a tea ceremony between Makinohara Mayor Kikuo Sugimoto, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green and Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi on Tuesday. The visitors enjoyed a final dinner at Moore’s home on Thursday night. In between, they got a complementary Jamie O’Brien Surf Experience with the Pipe Masters champion from the North Shore, and a lunch and discussion with authors Steve and Candice Sombrero.

It all was a result of Moore’s pandemic-delayed journey to win the first women’s gold in the sport in July 2021. Moore trained in Makinohara for about five days prior to the actual competition at Tsurigasaki Beach in Chiba Prefecture.

“My love for Japan actually started a long time ago when I studied Japanese in middle school and high school at Punahou,” Moore said, “and then it just seemed so serendipitous that the Tokyo Olympics was the first time that surfing would be in the Olympics. So, it was a full-circle moment for me going there, and then our pre-Olympic training camp was in the city of Makinohara. … The warmth and love and the ohana spirit that I feel like they showed me there was really touching, and I really wanted to try to give back to the people in that community who gave me so much, and gave me the strength to win gold.”

Moore’s father, Chris, had traveled to Makinohara a few times over the past year to help ready the children with swimming lessons, and several Moore Aloha youths helped host the children at the various activities this week.

Surfing enthusiast Torrey Gorra is not a member of Moore Aloha but flew in from California to volunteer throughout the week as a way of giving back from her participation in the foundation’s Queens of Queensbreak event for young women's mental health and wellness in October.

Gorra, 28, said she felt fully included; she even made use of her ocean lifeguard training to render aid when an event photographer stepped on a sea urchin during a group surfing activity.

But mostly, Gorra, an Arizona native who studied in Asia for her master’s degree in marine conservation, said she was happy to see the cultural exchange play out in a genuine way. She’s come to admire Moore, especially since the Tokyo Olympics, as an icon of women’s surfing as Gorra's own interest in shortboards grew.

“I got to work with some great people, not only Carissa who’s shredding these massive waves, but also making such big waves in the surfing community, for children, for women, just empowering them in that sense,” Gorra said.

Moore said it was "touching" that Gorra donated her time. She also thanked about a dozen sponsors for helping to make the event possible, including Central Pacific Bank for meals, Outrigger Hotels and Resorts for lodging and GMC Honolulu for transportation.

Other sponsors were: JAL Airlines, Duke's Restaurant, Ala Wai Texaco, Turtle Bay Resort, Kupu Hawaii, Asahi Grill, J.O.B. Surf Experience, KZOO Radio, SunBum, Honolulu Cookie Company and GoMacro.

Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.