Kelly Slater sparks all-in, multi-front blood feud pulling in world champs, other pros and journalists after posting new comment on Instagram; tells Ace Buchan, “Your comment is just an opportunity to virtue signal”

Kelly Slater at his caustic best!

Only two days after being mauled for his vax scepticism in an opinion piece in Australia’s The Sydney Morning Herald, Kelly Slater has opened multiple fronts, dragging in a who’s who of surfing, after responding to Ace Buchan’s comment on a post by Tracks magazine. 

Tracks jumped on the Herald piece, hard not to when a story is seared to a crunch and served with bread for sopping, and ran a pointer to it on their IG account.

Ace, who is thirty-nine, and a veteran of sixteen WSL seasons (best finish sixth in 2008), ran with what he figured was the voice of reason.  

Complex issue and everyone is entitled to their views and choices (whilst acknowledging that their choices in this case have a huge impact on those around then) …but is it not slightly alarming that professional athletes and more specifically surfers are completely over indexing in conspiracy theorists, anti vaxxers and spreading of misinformation? A group that also happens to over index in under education, over confidence and use of social media to digest and spread media? I wouldn’t listen to a bunch of doctors telling me which board to surf before a heat at Pipe, I’d chat to a bunch of my surfer friends ….but I wouldn’t listen to those same surfers tell me what to do and which medicine to take if I hurt myself in that heat, I’d go chase the doctors.

And the switchboards lit up. 

First, Slater, who turns fifty in a few months, and who’d previously told of friends dying from the vaccine, either from side-effects of suicide, wrote, 

@acebuchan I’ve yet to see a surfer giving advice on which medicines to take but feel free to show me. I’m personally against vaccine mandates for people in a free society with what the experts characterise as a leaky vaccine. So I think you’ve missed the point. When virologists and doctors acknowledge that you can catch and pass on covid because you carry a similar viral load when vaccinated, we’ve all got every right to be confused and should adamantly be asking questions. I’m not sure where you or anyone else missed the logic there. And I very well could be wrong but am happy to take that ‘risk’ whatever people assume that to be. Insinuating anyone is playing doctor here is a disappointing moment, a false equivalence, and nothing more than an appeal to authority. Your comment is just an opportunity to virtue signal.

Ian “Kanga” Cairns, rough, tough, big-wave hero, squirter of testosterone and lover of big chicken-fried steaks stood behind Kelly, as did two-thirds or so of the five hundred-ish comments. 

“In an era where Australia is being subjected to incredible levels of suppression of free speech and medical choice,” wrote Kanga, “@kellyslater should be applauded for taking a public stand for use of alternative treatments and opinions that have always been our prerogatives as Australians.” 

Much emotion and distorted angles and enough, I think, to lend the dullness of daily life an invigorating jolt. 

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