Remember when Dane Reynolds used to compete? Looking back, those were weird times. Kelly Slater once called him the best surfer in the world, and he is, to be sure, one of the best surfers in the world. But, by his own admission, a competitor he is not. “Everyone expects you to have that competitive drive. “Like, just because you’re a good surfer, that’s what you have to have,” he said back in 2015. “The lack of that has been what’s so confusing throughout my whole career. Everybody says that you have to have that, but I don’t feel that.”
Since the heat you see above occurred, Dane has thrown the chase for conventional accolades out the window. Instead, he pursues his own version of the dream — which, if you think about it, is really what chasing the dream should actually mean. He’s carved his own path, and if anything, it’s driven his adoring fans to be even more adoring. But there was a time when he donned a jersey and surfed between horns. There was a time when he thought about priority and heat strategy. The World Surf League dug into its archives for this episode of WSL Rewind, when Dane Reynolds was thinking about priority and heat strategy as he faced off against Gabriel Medina and Tiago Pires at the 2014 Quiksilver Pro France.
See more WSL Rewinds at Worldsurfleague.com
