Cronulla riots had Connor O’Leary hiding his heritage. Now he’s loud,proud and Olympics-bound

Connor O’Leary. It’s such an Irish name you’d expect to find it permanently sat on a stool in Temple Bar.

And to hear the born-and-bred Cronulla product’s broad Shire-stroked strine,you’d find him holding up an end at Northies.

But when O’Leary steps out at the Olympics in July,just as he has all year as world No.10 on surfing’s championship tour,it’s for Japan.

“I’ll be in the surfing communities in Japan and a kid will spot me and come running over for a selfie or an autograph,” O’Leary said before an upset loss during this week’s Bells Beach Pro in tough conditions.

“I’d never have thought that could happen for me. It’s so humbling and for my family,my aunties and uncles,my grandma in Japan,to see me surfing with a Japanese flag and representing them,and now to be going to the Olympics,it’s hard to put into words what it means to all of us.”

Especially when O’Leary once found it hard to acknowledge his Japanese heritage at all.

Or when he dwells on the challenges faced by his mother Akemi Karasawa – a Japanese surfing champion in her own right – just a generation earlier.

“She struggled a lot and she would’ve been one of the only women in the water at Cronulla,” O’Leary says.

“Let alone being Japanese,that definitely brought some attention and she did struggle living in Cronulla first off. She found a Japanese community around Hurstville and I’d go to Japanese school on Sunday and we’d gather and she found her friends there.

“Now she rules Cronulla. All the locals are now ‘Akemi’s out here,she’s doing her thing’ but back in the day it was a massive struggle for sure.”

As a kid,O’Leary would hide his Japanese roots despite it being his first language and the only one spoken in his family home. Inside those walls,he was Japanese. Step out the front door,Australian.

Now 30,he remembers the tension of the 2005 Cronulla riots vividly. The self-consciousness in history class at Cronulla High. And understandably,his own withdrawal.

“I went for a look at the riots that day,which wasn’t the smartest thing,and Mum was really worried about me,” O’Leary says.

“It sticks with you,I was only 12,but it was a crazy time down there. Everyone was very cautious and it was dangerous,no doubt.

“That was obviously a big moment,but for me,there’d be little things,like I’d be in history class and the Hiroshima bombings would come up.

“It’s not like it was targeted towards me,but there was that stigma around Asian culture. Not Japanese,but in Cronulla,if you were Asian,there was a stigma.

“I never got bullied but whenever it came up,I’d try and hide it just to fit in. I wasn’t a confident kid so I tried to be as Australian as I could because I didn’t want confrontation. It’s also great to see Cronulla come through that period too though,see it move on from that and become much more open and more multicultural.”

Either way,growing up a street back from Wanda Beach and with his Mum’s own love of the water,O’Leary was probably destined for it.

His memorable upset of Kelly Slater in Fiji fuelled a 2017 WSL rookie of the year run,only for a downturn in form to drop him off the tour for a couple of seasons afterwards.

“I’ve learned so much about myself - what works for me and what doesn’t,” he says. “You just can’t be switched on for a 12-day waiting period,I’d try though and it would get to me. I can have a beer if I want at the end of the day,it won’t kill me,I don’t have to be so serious. That’s taken time to figure out.”

Even more so,embracing his Japanese heritage.

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Any suggestion he has changed allegiances purely to land an Olympics spot is dismissed by his fluent announcement of the news in Japanese. A childhood spent flitting between the two countries every year. And a realisation of his place in both the surfing and wider world.

“I just realised I am as much Japanese as I am Australian,” O’Leary says.

“I’ve got a cool platform to tell people that if you have multiple cultures to you,be happy about it,be loud and proud. It’s so cool.

“I’ve got friends who have missed out on their second culture,who don’t know their language,and it sucks. For anyone dealing with the same thing,I went through it and being proud of that side of me,it’s massive for me as a person.

“I want to teach my kids Japanese when I have them,I want to keep that passing down through our family. I’d like to inspire the multicultural kids out there and the Japanese surfing scene too.”

Part of Dan Walsh’s travel to Bells Beach was funded by the World Surf League.

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