Olympics
Olympics’ youth movement on display in Tokyo
On a hot but cloudy afternoon last Tuesday, Carissa Moore stepped from the waves at Japan’s Tsurigasaki Beach and into history. By the time the 28-year-old Hawaiian was lifted on the shoulders of her coaches and draped in an American flag as the first women’s surfing gold medal winner in Olympic history, her life — as well as the life of the Games themselves — had been transformed. It was the kind of celebratory moment that has become familiar to fans around the world, but those have usually taken place beside a swimming pool, or inside a track stadium. This one, alongside the churning Pacific Ocean, marked what everyone from Moore to the nascent USA Surfing to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee hopes is the start of a new dawn for the Summer Olympics.
