Arguably the greatest athlete to ever live. He’s 51 and still as good as almost everyone on tour, nearly all of whom hadn’t even been born when he won his first world title. In heavy, hollow waves he’s still in the top five globally and one of the top five tube riders walking.
slater is an absolute legend ..the tech giants behind wired not so much for shadowba**** certain crucial information..slater spoke out about it yet i cant find it on youtube with all the right keywords...and its their fault in the first place through primitive infowar and censorship
I grew up in Cocoa Beach surfing the same spots as Kelly. I remember watching his technique and thinking, "I will literally never be that good." 😂 The dude was an absolute animal back then and it's been a joy to watch his career become what it did.
@Jacob32905 Yo random question but are you bald or balding as well? iv heard a theory that the Coco water being jus south of Cape Canaveral makes all the surfers bald there cuz the Nasa waste in the water
both the youngest and oldest world champion in the history of the sport. 11 times world champ, 55 career titles. He's not just the greatest surfer of all time. He is among the greatest athletes of all time in any sport. Kelly Slater you are the GOAT supreme.
Nailed it. Kelly is top tier in the surfing realm, a true waterman 11x WORLD Champ and still competing with kids just about 1/3 of his age! Dude is the ideal example of a *Living Legend* .
Kelly Slater is an absolute class act. Have met and photographed him several times and I can tell you all he is very kind, genuine, and humble champion. He is so generous with his time (within reason) for fans and especially the youth. One of the greatest things about professional surfing is the access that fans have to the professionals. Many times at the WSL Championship Tour the competitors are on the beach and talking with their fans and friends of their own accord.
I laughed way too hard at the hang 10 joke 😂😂😂 When that girl was asking about why her dad would have so many surfboards, my immediate thought was “she doesn’t get it.” It’s like anything that you love doing, you end up with a lot of different tools and items related to it. I will not go into just how much crochet, knitting, and drawing related things I have in my room… But I need them all!
same with the knitting and crochet! it's getting out of hand 😭 my family is so confused why I need so many of the same size of needles! like they just don't get it 💔
I sk8 & surf & I own a sk8 shop. I've had youngsters ask me how many sk8boards I have. Itz not a simple answer. When I lived in Fla,my friends had short boards & longboards. Some days in the summer the waves were too small for shorts boards. Itz funny how I knew surfers that rode only short boards & would clown ya if you said you had a good day goofin around on longboards. Longboards are harder to turn around & often the older ones didn't have leashes & you had to swim for them. Being short on a short board was easy for me in Fla.
I’m a photographer. Photographers and videographers have a name for that phenomena: We call it GAS. For “Gear Acquisition Syndrome”. Because no camera is objectively and absolutely perfect. A camera is perfect for a specific purpose. So we buy many, for different uses. Although, many of us, during our journey, tend to think that we’re limited by our equipment, that buying a new camera or lense will solve a given issue (hence why we seek the new shinny toy). And it is, almost every single time, a mistake. Usually, the photographer is the limited factor, not their tools.
Adding to the 'what if there's a surf competition and no waves' answer... On the WSL Championship Tour events they have a window of around two weeks to get to the final, known as a 'wait period'. They do a 'dawn patrol' early in the morning to decide if the surfing is on or off for the day. If the surf is great, they run the heats back-to-back to make the most of the conditions. I think both the men and women's tournaments can be completed in five full days of surfing.
I like how a lot of these he could have just laughed off as silly questions but he actually took the time to explain the answer properly, often with an interesting story to back it up.
How cool is that!? I like Slater's ability to answer the most total-no-clue-questions with the same seriousness and no judgement as the more-informed ones.
Excellent question and answer session was fun to hear the answers to newbie questions and also common ones that we’ve heard over the years. Thanks Kelly
These questions had me laughing 😂. Especially the one asking why my stepdad has so many boards when he’s the only person in the house. What Kelly Slater should’ve said is that you never can have enough boards lmao
Kelly has to do Part 2 ..... 1. What's your fav surfing movie? 2. Why are surfers so territorial about their 'spot'? 3. Have you ever had a shark nibble at your feet ? (btw, surfer here in oc)
"Hi, I'm Kelly Slater. I'm a professional surfer..." O m g! Many years ago, I went to one of the first Mavericks contests. Walking out to the beach, there was a kind of short, shave headed guy with a surfboard under his arm talking to a couple of guys. I stopped to eavesdrop. After the surfer left, one of the guys said to the others, Dude, who was that? Dude, that was Kelly f ing Slater! Imagine LeBron James or the Brady guy stopping to casually talk to fans before a game. A game in which he could be killed. Fan for life. 😎
I don't believe for a NANOSECOND that I know anything about surfing that Kelly Slater doesn't, but regarding the surfboards being strapped in backwards on top of cars - I worked at a surf shop for a few years and we always told people to mount them that way because the aerodynamics of the board going forward would loosen it under the straps, and cause it to fall off while you're driving down the road. The idea I think was that the board is shaped to go in that direction in the water so some kind of aerodynamic lift can happen that supposedly wouldn't happen if the board was strapped in backwards. Now I'm wondering if someone at the shop just made that up and everyone else repeated it 😅
Yes, the board is flatter (less rocker) at the tail end than the nose end. Better for the tail to be forward on the car.. What Kelly said could be true if you have horribly unreliable straps.
@@Jensen-C he’s 51, still very competitve against 20 year olds, 11 times world champion on a very demanding and difficult to practice sport. I just don’t see any other more accomplished athlete. Tom Brady just retired at 44 with 7 titles. Anyone that surfs knows that being good at it is very difficult because you cant just practice anytime you want, sometimes you can go a whole month without any waves.
Your argument is facile, it would be very difficult to justify. First, you said the greatest athlete ever. That's a different argument then the greatest amongst the greatest in their respective fields. For one you may say Bo Jackson and the other you might say Tom Brady. Tom Brady can also play near perfect and still lose a game easily, it's a team sport surfing isn't. Tom Brady has much more data to verify his greatness than Slater. No one to blame it just is what it is. So be careful of the blanket statements, it's showing your obvious bias.
Get a non-chipped duplicate car key that just unlocks the door but won’t start the car. Most surf trunks have an elastic string in the pocket to attach it or you can add one through the pockets drain grommet. Some leashes (DaKine) have a small Velcro pocket on the ankle strap. Another option is a combination lockbox (like realtors use on doorknobs) locked on your bumper somewhere. DON’T hide or use a magnetic key holder because some punk will be hiding and eye your spot.
Put a key in your suit and you’ve got a good chance of losing it. Here in Japan everyone just leaves their car open and respects each other’s property 🙏❤️
Kelly is obviously a legend but also huge props to Shane Dorian for developing a life jacket that’s saved several surfers’ lives after he himself had a scary experience. Love that he channeled his bad experience into something that helps surfers today.
I had a friend in High School surfing Indonesia and the skag in his board cut his femoral artery and he bled to death on the shore with his friend holding him.
I love the ongoing discussion about wave height! In NZ we go with the 'Hawaiian' thinking (must be a Pacific Ocean mentality). What I don't get here is why we still use feet for waves but km/hr for wind. We are now seeing more metric measurements for height, it makes it seem smaller though ;-) Instead of 6.5 foot it's only 2 metres. Basically the back of the wave height is half the face height, here.
I went to hide my keys under a rock once and there was another set of keys there. I still put my keys there and when I came back, they were still there and my car was untouched. Dude understood haha Took a pic with Kelly like 15 years ago when I surfed in Benji Weatherley's grom contest... so I'm sick
Fins forward on surf racks is most likely due to the surfboards rocker (curve) being flatter near the tail giving the wind less resistance on the board while your driving fast. I’ve seen the wind actually snap the nose off a short board. Just in case anyone is wondering…
I can't explain how a person's level of coolness exponentially shoots up when they're surfers. Like, this guy could say anything and it just sounds cool, ya know?
I clicked on the video just to see his response to the thumbnail but something about his eyes and the way he spoke mesmerized me like a snake charmer into watching the whole thing. I am a straight male
I always go to Lori Wilson Park, where they have Kelley Slater Pavilion East and West. He's a legend here in Cocoa Beach, FL. I never knew about the gloves that help you paddle faster. I have bad shoulders, so I am going to try this to help me paddle fast enough to catch a wave.
I love beaches. Actually love living close to them, whenever I could afford it..Rockaway Park or Long beach in N.Y. biggest waves I saw was in Hawaii, I was on the main Island. Surfers flocked there to ride 50 ft waves
