"We found the nose of one of Slater's boards two-and-a half-kilometres down the beach!”
The eleven-time champ Kelly Slater is in a race against time as he hustles to make it to Tahiti for what may be his last ever contest at Teahupoo, the waiting period beginning in only two days.
Slater, who is fifty-one, joined the conga line of tube-wranglers, which included popular surf vloggers Nathan Florence and Jamie O’Brien, to the Skeleton Coast wave called Donkey Bay or, more colourfully, “The Namibian Rickshaw.”
The popular WSL commentator Strider Wasilewski, who also made the sixty-hour journey from Los Angeles, described it as “the craziest longest most barreling wave ever and a very satisfied, adrenaline filled soul! The freedom of the desert and the beat down of my body, the greatest equalizer ever, thank you surfing. BTW, this wave is really hard to ride and very heavy, I don’t recomend going unless you are in amazing surf shape and an excellent surfer.”
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Slater said he destroyed three boards in one session at the joint and when he asked if he enjoyed Donkey Bay said “it donked me yesterday.”
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Of course, even in his sixth decade Slater remains one of the sport’s best tuberiders, and his form, unsurprisingly, was demonstrably sharp.
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Slater’s record at Teahupoo, meanwhile, is otherworldly, eighteen events for seven finals and five wins with an average…average… heat total of 16.29.
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Will they give Kelly a wildcard into Lowers?!
Any sign of stef Gilmore at the donkey working on her backside tuberiding?
Lololololol
Haha!
Since we now have the surf world’s biggest, blowhard vloggers in one place…maybe a photog with a good scope could really point and shoot.
Hit the Psyche meter. Like and subscribe.
Fuck remember when twenny foot was twenny foot?
remember when an amazing house was a mil?
You can probably buy a twenny footer for a mil now xox
Imagine a world where you had the best tube riders in the planet at the one spot for a swell and you could broadcast it, maybe run a simple comp. As if you wouldn’t pay.
But let’s do 3 foot trestles instead
Really a simple equation if you let it be.
It would stop all the goffys whining incessantly about too many right handers.