And opens door to requalifying for 2025 tour!
After Kelly Slater’s twenty-seventh retirement announcement aired one week ago following his second-last finish at Margaret River, opening a geyser of teary tributes, Kelly Slater will now compete in tour majors in Fiji and Tahiti, as well as the Championship Series Gold Coast Pro, which runs from April 27 through to May 4.
It ain’t for nothing, of course.
Kelly Slater has won Tahiti five times and Fiji, four, his surfing breathtaking, a savage, arrogant dance, taunting his opponents in his warlike way.
Watch Kelly Slater at Cloudbreak, a wave he’s surfed for almost forty years and which he knows as well as Pipeline. The way he balances his hindquarters, looking fierce and confident, those ears pulled back, purring like a kettle on the boil.
In a remarkable turn, with wins in both events Kelly Slater can now requalify for the 2025 tour.
Tour observers will remember the first time Kelly Slater retired iin 1998, the then six-time world champ having just-turned twenty-six. He competed sporadically over the next few years, winning Pipe in 1999 and the Eddie in 2002, before re-joining the tour to take on Andy Irons head-on, hinting at retirement every year thereafter.
Other retirement announcements can be found here, here, here and here.
