Kelly Slater reveals body part from cadaver used during major hip surgery as champ faces at least three months out of the water

"It was a war zone in there!"

The eleven-time world champ is currently staggering around on crutches following serious hip surgery to repair what Slater describes, in an informal couch interview with Kai Lenny post-finals Day, as a “shredded” labrum. 

The hip labrum, if y’didn’t know, is a ring of cartilage that lines the rim of the hip joint socket. It deepens the socket, which gives stability to the joint, acts a sorta shock absorber when you rum and jump and helps lube the joint. A small but real important part of the machine. 

Slater, who’s fifty-one, said his hip has been real bad ever since he did the splits on a wipeout at Sunset thirty-two years ago and thought he’d snapped his femur. A few years later he was towing in Tahiti and  doing flips off the back of waves when he landed weird, hurt his hip, and then in the summer of 2000 he went in for surgery to clean up the mess. 

Twenty three years later he was back on orthopaedic surgeon Warren Kramer’s operating bench for a complete Labral reconstruction, again, not a labiaplasty, although can you imagine how stunning Slater might look with a little Chanel lippy in tender beige given creepy Bruce Jenner’s metamorphosis to gorgeous Caitlyn Jenner?

“They took a cadaver’s labrum, inserted it and tied it to my bone,” Slater told Kai Lenny, the boy with the mild, defenceless eyes of a lamb who, one month ago, mobilised his over one-million followers after supplies of insulin to fire-ravaged Maui were blocked by government bureaucrats.

“Warren said my Labrum was basically shredded from end to end…there were bone spurs on the femur head…I also had a lot of scar tissue. Warren got in there and said it looked like a war zone, said he had to get in there and chop through the woods.” 

Pain, said Slater, is a regular companion. 

“It would explain to me why I don’t want to surf a lot. I’m in pain a lot. It affected why back radically, trying to get to a position I internally rotate and my hip throws my back off. I already have pretty extensive scoliosis.” 

Slater’s take on Filipe’s title win and the behaviour of the other attendees is also exceptional, as you might imagine.

Essential.