Kelly Slater plays head games. He might not fess up to it, but there has to be some validity to such claims when they come from numerous athletes on tour. Being coy about his strategies may be a mind game in itself. Maybe Slates has a whole bunch of strategies in his back pocket he’ll finally reveal after his formal retirement from the world tour–you know, fifty years from now. And maybe he’ll sell them for a nominal fee, making history behind the scenes as the driving force behind Jack Robinson’s consecutive world titles.
It’s funny. More than any surfer, Kelly Slater is the most ripe for speculation about his intentions.
And it’s not due to a lack of public appearances. Kelly’s open to interview opportunities, as evidenced by recent appearances on the Today Show, and the 1 of 13 part interview with Graham Bensinger above.
But again, in spite of Kelly’s seemingly openness to speak with the media, he has his secrets that fuel the conjecture train that is the internet. Remember 6 months ago when the first edit of Kelly riding his wave dropped? The immediate aftermath was an outpouring of curiosity about where the wave was located, what board he was riding in the video, what impact it would have on competitive surfing, and so much more. Some took to Google Earth to analyze the secrets hidden within Kelly’s words, specifically when he says, “This is our secret little spot, about 110 miles from the coast.” Nice try Kelly, but the internet found the wave’s location anyway. And then they flew a kite over it.
But something Kelly says in the segment above may be evidence that he’s made the internet and the general public the victim of an elaborate mind game–by out-Kellying himself.
Cue the video to 1:49. When asked about the prospect of the wave becoming incorporated into WSL competition, or even the Olympics, Kelly says it’s an opportunity to eliminate the subjectivity of judging in surfing, it’s apples to apples. “Just to be able to compare the actual skills on a wave, I think it would be much easier to do if you had a good, repeatable, quality wave.”
For the uninitiated in Kelly lore, this remark may have gone by without a passing glance. But given he’s made a career out of not just out-surfing his competition but out-smarting them and psyching people out, it seems inconsistent that he’d embrace the idea of eliminating all aspects of that from competition for the sake of, “comparing the actual skills on a wave.”
The only logical conclusion is that Kelly is trolling everyone. If his wave pool becomes a venue for competitive surfing, he could single handedly eliminate the different variables that spur the need for mind games in competition, something he seriously benefitted from. It’s totally contradictory and mind bending, and well, that’s the point. It’s hard to believe that it’s taken until now to realize it. I guess it just goes to show how closely we need to listen to everything Kelly says from now on in order to read between the lines more closely.
