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.
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Too bad he doesn’t have something like a family to fall back on and focus all his energy
Ha i wonder if their upcoming child will be australian, tahitian or fijian?
Fuck what if it’s negrasian. That’d cause a fuss
Fluid nationality and ethnicity based on Olympic eligibility
She can be whatever she lies but shes only the girlfriend. No common law marriage in Hawaii, California, or Florida. He dropped a load but not his bag. Pupukea bespoke property sold for 20 mil. Well played. She cant have assets he doesnt own anymore even if she could.
Kelly would be more relevant off tour and I wish he could understand that
Yeah, it’s like if Michael Jordan were still obsessed with winning a large pepperoni pizza in the annual Peoria free-throw contest, at the expense of the rest of his life.
Yeah kinda. For mainstream sports the league is the only stage. For surfing there are lots of stages, movies, trips, events, businesses, coaching … Or KS could create new judging criteria and contest format like the Quik Pro France festival that was way more fun and better waves than WSL, for instance
Sure. That’s my point. He can do a lot of things that would be rewarding and would shape the future and his legacy in surfing. His name opens doors even outside the surfing world.
Instead, he’s trying to win another WSL heat? TBH it’s beneath him to care, whereas the current crop of surfers really do and should care.
27 retirement announcements?
28 un-retirement announcements.
work til you drop I say
Yeah, with ya.
100%. Me thinks he’s just looking at ways to live longer. Don’t think for a second he hasn’t done the research…
His girlfriend (long-term) is pregnant with his second child.
Unless he goes to these far-flung contests across the Pacific, he’ll have to stay home and mow the lawn and shit. Hold her hair when she pukes. Go out at 1am to get Sriracha, Gefilte Fish and Tillamook Mud Slide ice cream (yes it HAS to be that kind!).
Be honest, guys. You’re offered the chance to GTFO and go surf some world class waves in tropical locales, maybe even win a contest, but hey, even if you come in last, you’re in Tahiti, not at home. And it’s all tax-deductible. What would YOU do?
depends if you are an asshole or not really.
Well, I did go up to the mountains out of cell phone range to go hunting with a good friend, when my wife was 8⅞ months pregnant. We didn’t so much as see one deer, but “hunting” is always a good excuse for why you have to go out in the woods like, right now, and not some other random time. It’s peaceful up there.
So I won’t throw any stones. 😇
the deer hunter! pick up burgers on the way home?
After hunting, it made more sense to gather.
algae and moss and lettuce…are safe for now…buy!
I would love to know how Kalani feels about this
And about a lot of things tbh.
Let’s ask him! https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
It’s so weird. He could have gone professional freesurfer 10 year ago (or 20) and dropped insane edits online. Take wildcards to wherever he wanted and quite probably “show the kids he’s still got it”.
He could have gone online surf coach to 100x the level of Noel Salas or Brad gerlach.
He could have gone legit surf coach and hung around the comps like Ross Williams and Glen hall and blown minds in freesurfing.
He could have just retired off into the sunset opening a pool somewhere staffed by skimpy bikini models.
Fuck, he could have gone full sporting savant and tried out for golf.
He’s just gambling on another pipe-like win but each day puts him further away.
Maybe he isn’t cut out to coach.
But he’s got the wave pool business, the surfboard business, the surfwear business, and probably more stuff. Doesn’t he have a financial interest in some surf resorts?
Oh yeah, and a kid on the way.
Objectively, winning a heat doesn’t mean anything if you’re the 11 time world champion, a record that likely will never be broken if only because the next guy surfing at Slater’s level won’t even want to try to break it.
What if he never wanted to retire at Margs and people just chaired him up to push him into retirement? Like the old fella in the office whenever he goes on vacation you drop the hint he doesn’t need to come back.
Changing dirty diapers should bring an end to Kelly endlessly changing his mind about retirement. He’ll finally realize changing some things can be just one shitty mess after another.
How many kids do you have Otto? I have one and once during a change she loosed a perfect cannon of yellow shit upon me from sternum to navel. Not life changing but memorable nonetheless.
Got one. A son. Was blessed with several occasions of such loosed shitnanigans. One of those times my wife, laughing her ass off, commented that it looked like some “demented Jackson Pollock painting” I responded that we aught not encourage such artistic endeavors, seeings how he hadn’t even hit finger painting age.
Kelly says: quitting is easy, I’ve done it hundreds of times
has it down to a fine art. the best retirements, everybody is saying it.
Make Teahupo’o Great Again!
After much deliberation, careful thought, and hours of consultation with my team I have decided to retire from Kelly Slater retirement announcements. It’s been a life altering run but I plan to spend more time bogging turns in shitty So Cal beachbreaks and taking pictures of my food.
called it.
does he have dirt on the high ups in the wsl, or just own most of it?
Seems sad that competitive surfing means so much to the one person that has accomplished everything there is in the “sport”. Peter Pan syndrome.
Before the inter web gave us live comps for free we had to either go sit on the beach or wait for an event wrap in a mag to know/care how it went. Do you think that made it easier or more painful to retire back then? Maybe it was just the fact that there was no real money in it so walking away to be a sales rep meant a pay raise that had guys done by 25 in the past.
He’s worse than our presidential candidates. “Sir, you retired last week”
American Presidential candidates never retire. Not when they’re obviously senile, or even dead.
Kelly Slater is worse than herpes
K53LLY on tour
Once my arm is back to normal, I’ll be totally nuking. For the Dream…Bigly. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
” pushes hard through the inside track, pumps hard, the pit stays open, and you can see the head just coming out of the tube.”
Is this quote from:
A.) Kelly’s heat at Cloudbreak
B.) Kalani in the delivery room
C.) Standard Joe dribble
D.) All of the above
D.