full contact
a giant among
giants 21 Years Deep, Kelly Slater, Stands Alone
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Amongst the myriad of triumphs Kelly Slater possesses under his formidable competitive belt, there is one particular event that stands out. For any surfing aficionado familiar with Kelly’s extensive list of accomplishments in the surfing realm, they would claim Kelly’s two perfect scores of 20 out of 20 points in the Billabong Tahiti Pro in May 2005 as the be all, end all of all his incredible feats.; especially since the last person to achieve this was Shane Beschen in 1996, and that was utilizing an old scoring system based on threewaves opposed to the current two-wave criteria. Granted Kelly was the first person to ever manage to earn two perfect scores under the Association of Surfing Professionals two-wave system, it slightly pales in comparison to Kelly acquiring the title of World Champion in 2008 and 2010 – bringing his collection of World Championships to an astonishing ten titles since first acquiring the title in 1992. Now before the purists enter an uproar, if at this juncture they have not managed to enter to some berserk frenzy at this point (and if so, deepest apologies), the reason it is crucial to observe the 2008 and 2010 wins is because of Slater’s age. We tend to hear the age-old adage that “Age is nothing but a number”, but in Slater’s case there is a stalwart resonance with the cliché without resorting to some type of saccharine string of words that dampen the
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SKINNIEMAGAZINE.COM
By Alex Mendoza
effect of Slater’s influence in the sport. Scan the pages of sports history and there are the definitive icons of each sport, who in some way, shape or form managed to defy the notion of what a person is capable of executing in their respective fields. Kelly Slater is such an individual, displaying a true mastery of his craft by scaling Mother Nature’s towering monoliths of liquid fury, and the methods upon which Slater adopts during each run teeter on the edge of poetic. Picture the endless horizon of the ocean blue before his eyes. The sun comfortably rests at the highest point in the crystal-blue sky. Thousands of fans, journalists and casual onlookers line the perimeter of the scorching beach sands. The entire legacy that has trailed his career places an irrefutable amount of pressure on his shoulders, but his eyes remained transfixed on the ocean. The intense focus implies there is no concentration on what mighat be said, or what has been said – say for this exact sliver in time where he is out there paddling in the water towards the obstacle that has become the primary object to conquer in his life. These monstrous waves have come and gone before, posing as nothing more