“What did Kelly need? I sat back as a surf journalist and thought, the man needs spite! Kelly Slater needs spite!"
It will come as no surprise to followers of BeachGrit and fans of Chas Smith that his multi-medium attacks on Kelly Slater have been revealed as a ruse to push the greatest-ever surfer into hitherto unseen levels of performance.
In the latest episode of Chas Smith Hates Surfing, the Cardiff-based linguistics professor says he was motivated by a desire to prove that age is unimportant even at the highest levels of sport.
“Today we find ourselves in a historic moment for yesterday the fifty-five-year-old from Coco Beach Kelly Slater won…a surf heat. History said this was not supposed to happen. That a man above certain age is no longer able to perform at the highest levels, to win surfing competitions, or running or rowing or tennis or ping pong competitions.
“It’s a young man’s game, all games, apparently.
“We, the ageing, then, are forced to say, I guess so, and that getting older means getting irrelevant, just passing time until you fall into an open grave. Sad, depressing, downright bleak.
“And here we have Kelly. I saw him coming down the pipe and said, Kelly Slater is going to be the one who sends everything on its head. Kelly Slater, flipping the script.
“But what does he need? He hasn’t won in a year or more! It seemed over. It seemed dark.
“What did Kelly need? I sat back as a surf journalist and thought, the man needs spite! Kelly needs spite! So I began a campaign declaring he would never win another heat in his career, that we had witnessed the last professional win of the Kelly Slater era knowing that these little seeds get planted in the greatest ever’s heart. And a spite tree grows!
“It takes a village to build a GOAT, as the great Hillary Rodham Carter once said. I knew I had work to do, paint the story, re-engage the story, get this story to have a traction for Kelly Slater to win a heat.”
Chas Smith also used the same technique to ensure Kelly Slater fathered a boy.
And, here we are.
