Online sleuths with magnifying glasses show Kelly Slater using BeachGrit as a special in-your-pocket encyclopedia!
You don’t have to dig too far into the ol archives to realise that Kelly Slater, greatest athlete of all time with the possible exception of Rickson Gracie, ain’t a fan of your ol pals at BeachGrit.
A few years back a New Zealand reader had a little back and forth with Kelly Slater, described in these pages as the world’s most thin-skinned surfer. When BeachGrit came up he wrote “Fuck those guys.”
Many good times over the years, of course.
The Chinese girlfriend blood feud with a troll, a favourite.
Anyway, online sleuths, have foiled Kelly Slater’s supposed avoidance of all things BeachGrit in an Instagram post by Bob Hurley, the “razor sharp surf magnate”.
It’s an innocuous enough post.
Kelly Slater talks about a surfboard Florida’s Matt Kechele had made for the Typhoon Lagoon wave pool, which is now in his possession. It is five-foot five long and featured on the cover of Surfing in 1988. Subsequently, it was owned by the Malloy brothers and used as a learn-to-surf tool by their kids.
But look a little close and…yes…Kelly is using BeachGrit! Referencing the story, “Revealed: A history of Kelly Slater’s Pool!” which spoke highly of the pool’s technical architect the Jamacian-born Adam Fincham.
An excerpt:
Adam Fincham was a research professor from the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Southern California. When Kelly came knocking in 2006, swinging his idea of a barrelling man-made wave.
Fincham had worked mostly in Europe and didn’t know who Slater was. But Fincham “pulled together a team of colleagues and undertook a pilot study in 2007.
They decided that, yes, it was possible.”
Two years later, Fincham was director for science at KSWC, working out of a lab in Culver City, just of out of LA, and using a 1/15th model scale for testing.
Kelly Slater referencing BeachGrit while at his pool? His essential guide to all things surf? Kelly Slater’s portable reference tool?
Readers ask: does this suggest better days ahead for the two spearheads of surfing?
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