Kelly Slater – Biography

by ADMIN on APRIL 6, 2011

There will not be another professional surfer in your lifetime the likes of Kelly Slater. That’s a fact. Let’s run down the basics: Shattering every competitive record imaginable and redefining the sport in every possible condition and venue, Slater has exalted competitive surfing to performance art and served as catalyst for shifts in popular board design since he was a teenager. All the while, the right coast regular footer did some 10 episodes of Baywatch and dated Hollywood sex bombs. Easily dodging influences that might derail his infinite ascent, Slater has defied both age and odds to somehow remain not just relevant but dominant for two decades. Hell, he made winning the world title seem almost easy by achieving 10 times what most see as pure fantasy and even in his “off” years finishing in the top 5. While average surfers continue to marvel at his mastery, 3 generations of pro surfers have scrambled to play catch up to the boy, man, and now veteran Kelly Slater.

An inauspicious start, Robert Kelly Slater began his grommet hood amid both the drifty mush of Cocoa Beach, Florida and the friction of a fracturing family, but difficulty often breeds creativity and ambition. Thus, once he began surfing at age 5, Slater showed promise quickly with a gangly but functional style. ESA contest organizers might as well have penciled him into every final at the start of each season as he racked up 6 Eastern Surfing Championships and 4 national titles. With clean-cut boyish looks that made him a magazine darling, a phenomenal amateur contest record, and unprecedented industry support, Slater would quickly outgrow the East Coast Surfer label.

He beat Rob Machado to win the OP Junior at Huntington Beach in 1989, and by age 18, Slater was poised for the pro ranks with a ground breaking performance at the Body Glove Bout at Trestles. Knowing a good investment, sponsors lined up to court the would-be king. Slater signed with Quiksilver (for a rumored 6-figure salary) who subsequently released a short promo film called Kelly Slater in Black and White.

Those spare 30 minutes of footage put the world on notice that the skinny Floridian was poised to eclipse his media hype. Slater’s fin slipping mastery of Trestles made it obvious that his approach was something new. He peppered the carving flow of Curren with nuanced sideslips and aerial acrobatics. Matt Warshaw writes, “He would never match Curren for fluidity, but his legs has more spring, his body was more limber, his approach was more innovative, and he had matchless coordination and reflexes.” Moreover, he adhered to the integrity of the wave without wasted movement or energy. Old or young, no one could deny that his surfing was the next bar…mind surfing at its best. By 1992, Kelly Slater was the youngest world champ in history at 21 years old.

Slater had quickly dispatched the status quo, and stalwarts complained that judges were rewarding slips and slides over power and commitment. But surfing’s transformation was swift and definite, and soon it was televised by way of the seminal surf porn extravaganza Momentum, Taylor Steele’s video vehicle highlighting the New School generation. Young surfers like Rob Machado and Shane Dorian pushed boundaries in and above the wave to the din of high octane punk rock. But the video footage made it clear. Slater was light years ahead of his peers.

As competitive juggernaut, Slater’s approach was one of totality. He dominated the professional tour from 1992 to 1998 with a combination of raw talent, ruthless heat strategy, and mental intimidation. After a 6^th place finish in 93, he won 5 straight world titles to quickly erase Mark Richard’s seemingly insurmountable record of 4 tour wins. But maybe it was all too easy. Slater drifted into a quasi-retirement at the ripe old age of 26.

Even with good intentions of traveling and spending time with family, Slater didn’t fare well away from the action. He stepped back in to win at both Pipe and Teahupo during the next few years, but the thrill of real competition was fast becoming a memory until Kauai firebrand Andy Irons found his mojo. By 2003, Slater was back in the fray, and the two regular footers became embroiled in the sport’s most riveting rivalry. Presented by the press as epic conflict between good and evil, the two locked horns all year until a last second win at Pipe gave Irons his second world title. Slater was devastated as chronicled in his post contest breakdown. He flirted with the top 3 for two years until wrestling back the title in 2005 and again in 2006…and still again in 2008.

That year, he took the season ending Pipe Masters on a chubby 5’11” quad nicknamed “The Wizard Sleeve,” as part of a design arc began 2 decades earlier as a teenager riding paper thin boards. As always, the surfing world followed, although this time, the buoyant, versatile design made more sense for the average surfer.

At this point, the wonder kid was long gone, replaced by a seasoned veteran. He told Surfer Magazine’s Sean Doherty, “I think it’s kind of hard for a lot of guys on Tour to relate to the era I first started on Tour, simply because they were literally in single digits, if alive at all.” Putting it in perspective, Slater had dominated Curren, Carroll, and Pottz; blew away Machado, Knox, and Dorian; bested Irons, Parkinson, and Fanning. And in 2008 and 2010, he had cleaned up the likes of Dane Reynolds and Jordy Smith with two more titles. But 9 was not enough, and in 2011, Kelly Slater achieved the impossible by winning his 10^th world title, thus cementing his place as the most dominant athlete ever. The Jordan, Woods, and Armstrong analogies suddenly sounded weak.

Upon looking back, the metaphorical trophy chest looms large: Slater won the prestigious Pipe Masters 6 times and took the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau. He was the youngest and the oldest ever world champ. He won the Hawaiian Triple Crown twice and holds the record for most WCT event wins (while amassing well over 2 million dollars in contest winnings) with the highest two-wave total (20 points). But while contest wins and point totals constitute much of his Slater-ness, there is a cultural impact to be considered as well.

No other surfer has crossed over to the mainstream so seamlessly. As fodder for tabloid gossip, Slater went from Baywatch “actor” (as teenage hunk Jimmy Slade) to jet-setting bachelor sporting some of the world’s hottest arm candy from Pamela Anderson to Gisele Buchan. He was voted one of People Magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People,” rode the extreme sports wave right into a signature video game and eventual 3-D Imax event: The Ultimate Wave Tahiti. He loaned his voice to the animated film Surf’s Up, has hosted a show on Sirius Radio, played guitar for The Surfers (including Rob Machado and Peter King), whose album Songs from the Pipe was produced by T Bone Burnett, and often hops on stage with the likes of Ben Harper and Eddie Vedder. As musician, actor, occasional surfboard cartoon scribbler, and co-author of his autobiography Pipe Dreams, Kelly Slater has all but cornered every conceivable medium.

After the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan resolution in May 2010 recognizing Slater’s “outstanding and unprecedented achievements in the world of surfing and for being an ambassador of the sport and excellent role model,” his launching of The Kelly Slater Foundation to further philanthropic causes and the Kelly Slater Wave Company (with intent to build futuristic artificial wave parks), it would seem impossible that anyone can guess what’s next. Slater holds 10 world titles and is surfing at 38 better than anyone on tour. He has changed the way we ride waves through his aerial innovation and ethereal approach to tube riding. His name has soaked into the very fabric of American culture, reaching far beyond the world of surfing. It might seem the space shuttle exploding off the launch pad near Slater’s boyhood home of Cocoa Beach would serve a fitting metaphor for his career. One problem. He ain’t coming back to Earth.