The harsh slap of age limits.
Kelly Slater’s Olympic surf dream was, let’s be honest, already dangling by only a thread. As followers of both the Olympics and surfing know, the top two men and top two women per country, on the World Surf League Championship Tour punch their ticket to the Games. A further third man and woman are additionally slotted for the country that wins Fernando Aguerre’s International Surfing Games. The rest come from… to be honest, I have no idea.
That aside, this year’s Paris Olympiad, which comes to us from The End of the Road all the way across the world in Teahupo’o would be such a magical fit for the 11x World Champion. Slater navigates the slabbing left with ease even at the ripe upper middle age of 54.
Therein lies two problems.
Slater was the fourth, or something, American on the rankings and he might be too old.
The Philippines boxing legend Manny Pacquiao, almost a decade younger than Slater at 45, was told by the International Olympic Committee that he was too old to play punch punch in the five ringed circus even after petitioning the various powers that be.
The IOC said Sunday it wrote to Olympic officials in Philippines explaining the age limit for boxers of 40 will be upheld. The IOC now oversees Olympic boxing after derecognizing the International Boxing Association governing body.
The age limit for Olympic boxing was raised to 40 from 34 in 2013 — a move that would have let Pacquiao try to compete at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. He chose not to at the time when he was also elected to be a senator in his home country.
It is unclear if Pacquiao would have tried to earn a place at the Paris Olympics in one of two qualification tournaments that open later this month in Italy and in May in Thailand.
Pacquiao won 12 world titles over the course of his illustrious career though even that did not bend the sympathies of Olympic organizers.
Slater has not hidden his desire to taste Olympic glory but it must be assumed that surfing’s age limit is lower than boxing seeing as surfing is a “cool youth sport.” What do you think it is? 28? 19? Whatever, the number is certainly smaller than the greatest surfer of all-time’s 56.
Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright. The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light. And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout but there is no joy in Cocoa Beach, Florida for Kelly has struck out.
Or has he?
More as the story develops.
