I feel pretty old. Not mentally, just in my body. Photo: Jared Aufrichtig
Kelly Slater is an interesting man. He has consistently been on the forefront of all things surf for decades. While many people get stuck in their ways as they age, Slater makes an effort to constantly evolve. In the last few years, the retirement question has been on a lot of lips, and the 11 time world champion hasn’t exactly given a real answer–possibly because he doesn’t know himself. In a recent interview with The Guardian, he opens up about everything from his daughter and his future plans to his fear of drowning and his thoughts on sharks.
“My daughter thinks I’m cool because I know Chris Hemsworth. She’s 19 now and has just graduated from college. We’re pretty close, but it wasn’t always that way. I’m realistic about my situation as a father. I’ve basically spent her whole life traveling and she was raised 99% by her mother.”
“I feel pretty old. Not mentally, just in my body. At the moment I’m training to overcome injuries so I can be strong for the next world tour. I’m not retiring. I have every intention of being 90 and surfing Hawaii’s Backdoor Pipeline.”
“As a kid I had a fear of drowning. It stemmed from being in swim class when I was six: one of the instructors grabbed my head and thought it would be funny to hold me under when I didn’t have a breath. Well, that fucked me up for years. Later, as an adult, I had a flashback. I was on a huge wave, on one of the biggest surf days in Hawaii, and I could see him dunking me.”
“There isn’t an over-achiever in sport who is super-secure. If you have everything you need in life, you probably won’t push yourself to the point of an athlete. Some of the things that drive me go right back to my upbringing.”
“I have lost a lot of people in my life – maybe 40. The worry is that so much death desensitizes you to grief somehow. The one I still cry about is Peggy. She was a lady from California, a sort of second mum who was murdered when I was 15. That’s not cancer or a car accident; that’s somebody taking a life.”
“You can’t stress about sharks. I mean, is it even hungry? The way I think about it is, there are 460 species of shark and 456 of them aren’t bothered about eating you.”
“My ambition as a young surfer was to try to own homes in different places. I bought my first apartment in Australia when I was 20, and now I’ve got places in Hawaii, California and Florida. But Fiji is where my heart is and where I spend six weeks a year.”
“The stuff I learned from my parents was more by default than instruction. As I got older I realised that maybe they did love each other, but they weren’t good at knowing what they really wanted, or being open. It’s made me strive for something more in my relationships.”
“I can’t really downplay my interest in fashion now that I have a fashion label. After 20 years with Quiksilver I felt it was time to create something that was sustainable and responsibly sourced.”
“When I’m really tuned in I can mind-surf. I can watch the waves from the beach and feel the movements in my body, which is kind of useful.”
“My mum sold her banjo so I could go to a contest in Cornwall. I can’t help but still feel bad about that.”
