Kelly Slater is somehow still on top. The iconic surfer has won 11 world titles, 56 pro events and 832 heats in his three decades of competing, and in some ways, nothing has changed.
“I think it’s easy to mistake continuing with not having satisfaction. If I never surfed another contest right now, I’d be more than satisfied with what I’ve done,” Slater said in a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post. “And I’m content with all of that . . . You know, there’s always going to be another challenge if you want it. It doesn’t mean that I’m not satisfied with what I’ve done.”
Slater will wear the yellow jersey at this week’s World Surf League event as the tour’s top-ranked competitor, the first time he has held the honor since 2014. He won last week’s Billabong Pro Pipeline event in Oahu, Hawaii, and not that anyone needed a reminder, but Slater made clear that he’s still plenty capable of keeping up with the young kids on their boards.
Slater’s body has maybe changed a bit, and his approach to the sport has probably evolved a lot. But as long as he’s on his board and in the water, there’s an unmistakable competitive fire, one that doesn’t suddenly extinguish at 50.
“I feel like something kind of overtakes me and it’s almost like my avatar, when I really get in the zone. I get such an intense focus that it almost feels out of body for me,” he said. “I guess it feels like my evil twin. To some degree, I feel like it’s this different sort of alpha male inside of me that comes out that has a lot less fear and inhibitions about choices and decisions and stuff.”
“And I think in my normal daily life, I’m a lot more sort of thoughtful and aware of other people’s feelings and that kind of thing,” Slater continued. “But this evil twin gives me a super high intensity, focus and awareness of everything that’s going on.”
The world has seen it since Slater won his first pro event at age 20, but that competitive hunger was born even earlier. Growing up in Cocoa Beach, Fla., a city known more for its sharks than its waves, Slater started surfing at a young age. But he also played other sports. He recalled being an undersized nose tackle on the football field, using his quickness and small frame to maneuver around offensive lineman. He uses that same fearlessness and mental strength to tackle giant waves.
“As a kid I figured out how to win. I had a chip on my shoulder and an inferiority complex or something,” he said. “I wanted to make something of myself. And surfing became that thing … that was going to allow me to channel my inner demons.”
All those victories and all those years at the top weren’t a product of simply being physically better than the field. Surf legend Shaun Tomson has studied Slater his entire career and is consistently amazed at Slater’s ability to connect with his field of play.
“I have never ever seen a sportsman that can connect with his art form with his physicality and with the spiritual aspect of this sport at the absolute 11th hour when it’s all absolutely necessary,” said Tomson, who is credited with helping revolutionize tube riding in the 1970s.
“When you compete against him, you can’t just kill him. You have to kill him twice because he will come back like a zombie. He comes back with this, not aggression, but this pure passion and power. He is this enlightened being, like a Buddhist monk, Zen master and ninja warrior all rolled together."
Slater has grown along with the sport, sometimes forcefully pushing it along and more recently impressed by what the younger generation can do. The skill level of today’s top surfers, Slater says, exceeds anything his generation could have imagined.
Even though he’s still capable of wrangling any wave and winning any week, Slater is starting to acknowledge that the end is nearing. He already retired once before, stepping away from competition in 1999 before returning three years later. This time around he doesn’t want to make his retirement a big show or take on any extra pressure from competition to competition.
And even if he retires from the pro tour, Slater doesn’t rule future competitions, including the Olympics. He just missed the U.S. team for the Tokyo Games, where surfing made its debut, but isn’t ruling out the 2024 Paris Games. However, to qualify for the U.S. team, he would have to remain on tour, so he raised the possibility of competing for another country.
Regardless, Slater will remain an important face of the sport and probably won’t disappear from the public eye. He has a popular clothing line and heads up the industry-leading wave pool company, which he developed before selling a majority stake to the World Surf League.
His passion for surfing will certainly continue, even if at times Slater finds himself wrestling with his exact role in growing the sport’s popularity and introducing it to so many new people.
“Part of me likes surfing being a mystical, secret thing,” he said. “The more popular I see it becoming, the less good I feel about being a part of it. . . . We all like to surf by ourselves. There’s a solace in the water that comes from being by yourself or just with your friends.”
“I long for that peace in the water,” Slater said.
