Kelly Slater The Conundrum
As the circus descends on Hossegor and the World Tour gathers pace, Michael Fordham catches up with the demigod that will later be crowned Champion for an unprecedented tenth time.
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Hossegor at the time of the Quik Pro is a zoo. The menagerie is restricted however to the genus of homo surficus – albeit in its many regional variations. There are soul-boy hipsters in trilbies, deck shoes and Frogskins wielding biscuits and caspers with self-conscious panache. There are übergrom towheads whose every sartorial inch is plastered with sponsors’ stickers, avatars of North County San Diego culturally displaced with baguette in hand. There are scruffy-haired teens from the posher environs of South Devon on the surf lig with their Alice-banded girlfriends. There is also, of course, a legion of the surf curious at the beach enjoying the dying embers of the autumn sun, and an equal number of shutterbugs and other media slags from every corner of the action sports media, brandishing their wristbands frantically in an attempt to get access to the top thirty-four practitioners of the sport of the Ancient Kings of Polynesia.
At the centre of this hullabaloo is one man’s image. Kelly Slater has been the poster child for the action sports industry these last three decades. We have grown up with him as this whole thing blew. Somewhere along the way he became the most all-conquering aquatic athlete ever and the only surfer of which your auntie has ever heard.
When we arrive in Hoss at the end of September, the Slater story is gathering towards critical mass. Having just pulled into the lead of the ASP World Championship Tour (WCT) by winning the Trestles, California, event, the thirty-eight-year-old is focusing on scoring an unprecedented tenth world title. Shadowing Smelley Cat was always going to be a daunting scenario: everyone wants a slice of Slater, and your humble correspondent envisaged a riotous distraction of paps and autograph hunters wherever our subject may roam. There certainly was that. But what we also found was a supremely focused athlete who was, though elusive and contradictory, at times earnestly evocative of his sport’s elemental profundities.
Over a period of five days we hung about in the Slater entourage a little, had some dinner, swapped some stories, and drove from beach to hotel to golf course and back again pretending not to be part of Kelly’s constant, frustrating throng [...].
But with our allotted time running out, and despite loads of casual conversations and group hangs, there was precious little in the way of journalistic quotes. So on the way back from golf we finally manage to spend an hour in Kelly’s sole company to do an interview (albeit with Julian Wilson, Julian’s girlfriend and Guy the photographer behind the wheel). Alone at last. Sort of.
HUCK: How does it feel to be Kelly Slater, the centre of the global surf industry?
Kelly Slater: I just try not to think about it. The only way you get to the end is to focus on right this minute. Worrying about the end result of something is never going to be the way of accomplishing it. I’ve got to think about the heat I’m in, the wave I’m going for. […] You’ve got to be really present-minded. You’ve got to have a clear head, and you’ve got to have nothing else you’re worrying about in your life. You also have to try to be aware of a lot of things, and to be aware of things on a deep level. You have to be aware of the way you live your life and how that applies to the things that you’re trying to do. You have to be aware of whether these things are helping you or holding you back. I view it as a pretty dynamic thing that’s happening out there. […] There’s a lot of input. You’ve got to figure out which of these inputs are helping you and which are hurting you.
Are you conscious of the way people react to you, especially when you’re in the water?
I’d rather be oblivious to it and just surf by myself or with a couple of friends and not have any expectations from people. Whether they think you’re killing it just because you stand up and you’re a pro surfer, or if they’re critical of you and think you’re surfing like a kook because they expect a lot out of you, it takes away from the fun of it in some ways.
But you’re obviously still motivated to compete, right?
That competitive desire is waning somewhat. Right now, I’m competing and that’s what I’ve chosen to do so I’m one hundred per cent applied, but I’m kind of yearning to get off the Tour after so long. […] It’s just not exciting for me when I show up at a contest. It’s more stressful. It used to be so exciting. I was like, ‘Whoa, there’s Tom Curren, there’s Martin Potter!’ […] I need to get away from it for a while to keep it exciting. If you travel around with the best thirty or forty surfers in the world, it’s hard to get a wave when you’re just part of that crowd. If I get to be away from the Tour for four to six months or something and then I see the guys it’s pretty cool. But, you know, generally it’s just a pain in the ass because they catch as many waves as I do, and we’re just competing for waves with each other all the time. I’d hate to be some guy who was just at his local beach when we show up. We’d be a pain in the butt.
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Enjoy your triumph deep in your soul, the Ocean is all yours!!!