Is There Anywhere More Fitting for Kelly Slater to Ride Off into the Sunset Than Fiji?

And so we return to Kelly Slater’s happy place to bid him adieu after a mind bending 280 World Tour events, 56 CT wins and 11 World Titles. What more fitting send off could there be than at the Fiji Pro and Tavarua, a place he first visited as an 18 year old way back in 1990, and declared to be his favorite surf destination on earth.

“I’ve thought forever that Cloudbreak is the best wave in the world,” Slater told SURFER in the new issue. “I feel so connected to the wave. The number of waves I’ve had at one break in my life are way higher at Cloudbreak than anywhere else because it’s just a great quality wave. It’s that rare wave that’s good from very small to as big as waves get. There are very few waves in the world that have a reef or bottom that handles waves of all sizes and keeps good quality.”

“Most have their little zone where they’re at their best—two-foot, six-foot, 20-feet. You’re not paddling out to Waimea when it’s head-high. But you are going out to Cloudbreak when it’s 40 or 50-foot and getting the craziest wave that’s ever potentially been ridden. But you can also get the most fun wave you’ve ever had when it’s head-high. That really eclipses all of the other waves, for me. If it was a right also, it’d be too much. If it was a split peak, there’s no way it could exist,” Slater continued.

Slater’s affinity for roping Pacific reefs and slabs is no secret and it’s no coincidence his company, Outerknown, sponsors both the Pacific stops on tour in Fiji and Tahiti. How the son of a bait and tackle shop owner from wave-starved Cocoa Beach, Florida, became the greatest competitor of all-time in waves of consequence is a story that begins at Pipeline, where a pre-teen Kelly served the most painstaking of apprenticeships in the art of navigating waves that can kill you.

“I remember seeing Kelly when he showed up at Pipeline, he was afraid of it but he surfed all day long on the shoulder, and he was this little guy on the very edge of the shoulder practicing and practicing, getting to know the wave, and then inching over and inching over,” recalls former world number one Brad Gerlach.

No wave on Earth has killed more people than Pipe, and no wave demands more from those who take it on. A shifting, once-twice-three times refracted A-Frame that behaves like a super-sized beachbreak but breaks over over barely submerged lava spikes and caves, is still surfing’s ultimate test. It’s also the ultimate training ground for if you can get properly barreled here the world of hollow waves is now your oyster.

Slater won his first event at Pipeline in 1992 at the age of 20 while on his way to winning his first world title later that year. A mere 30 years later, and one week shy of his 50th birthday, he beat Hawaii’s Seth Moniz in the final, a surfer he’d cradled in diapers as he competed against and idolized his father, Tony, in his formative years. In total, Slater would win eight Pipe Masters — the most on record by a long way — while his performances in heaving Pacific slabs would become the cornerstone of multiple world title winning campaigns.

As good as he is at Pipe, he’s also got the record for the most wins at the Tahiti Pro with five — more than twice that of his nearest rival — and at Fiji, where he’s won four events. Of those wins, his victory in the 2013 the Fiji Pro, aged 41, stands out as the greatest in mind. After missing the opening round to attend the birth of his nephew (only to miss that as well) he arrived in time for his Round Two heat and set about putting on one of the greatest performances of his career. Riding a 5’ 9” quad, he showed peerless mastery over the six to ten-foot conditions on offer, racking up three perfect tens in the event, including a perfect 20 out of 20 in the quarters. The win also gave him the ratings lead, though he was narrowly edged out for a world title by Australia’s Mick Fanning in a dramatic showdown at Pipeline despite going on to win the event.

This ability to show the world the outermost limits of of poise under potentially fatal volumes of Pacific Ocean is, in my opinion, his greatest legacy. Getting barreled is the pinnacle of the surfing experience. Frick, it’s the pinnacle of the human experience if you ask me, and Slater has shattered the age barrier like no other when it comes to performing at his peak in surfing’s most gladiatorial arena. Where today’s Championship Tour format allows surfers to win world titles without being truly tested in waves of consequence, this was not the case during Slater’s world title-winning years, and he relished the opportunity to tangle with the heaviest and hollowest waves you could paddle.

As remarkable as his competitive statistics are, they don’t tell the story of courage and bravado he’s had to produce to perform in this fashion in waves of consequence, an arena in which he’s taken on all comers and beaten them across multiple generations, from Tom Carroll to Andy Irons, and Gabriel Medina to John John Florence. As good as the accolades and awards he’s received have been, his purist approach to summiting surfing’s most evil waves has earned him unending credibility among surfing’s hardened core, and that’s gotta feel good.

If there’s one other thing Slater will be remembered for, alongside the world titles, the courage and the longevity, it’s versatility. This is the guy who went rail to rail with a generation of Aussie sand-bottom, pointbreak scions and got the biscuits over and over and over again. A total of six wins at the Snapper Rocks event is another of his records, along with four at Jeffreys Bay (equal with Fanning), and four at Bells (equal with Mark Richards and Fanning), and proves the peerlessness of his rail savagery. 

I was on hand to witness a number of his victories at Snapper, and again, it’s a performance from 2013 that springs to mind. At all-time six-foot Kirra, the GOAT beat not one but two Coolie Kids in Fanning and Joel Parkinson, in the semifinal and final respectively, to take out the event. In a perfect illustration of his command over the conditions that day, and the competitive format at large, he had used priority to stuff Parkinson in a perfect Kirra pit and snuff out any hope of him winning the event in the dying stages of the final; the Aussie famously giving Kelly the bird as the 41-year-old scooped into the tube in front of him and condemned to defeat and a brutal wipeout.

High-performance surfing is where Slater made his name, and where he really put some distance between himself and the rest of the field, particularly in the early years in which he netted an unprecedented five straight world titles. Much of his best surfing was done at Trestles, then the world’s premier high-performance canvas, also the scene of the seminal “Kelly Slater in Black and White” surf film that announced him to the world, and where he would win a total of six world tour events.

And finally the aerial arena in which he’s provided as much influence and innovation as anyone in surfing history. Who could forget his invention of the Rodeo Clown at the Pipe Masters way back in 1999. Or, 15 years later, aged 42, when he landed surfing’s first and only frontside 720 air reverse.

All of which makes Fiji the most fitting finale imaginable. No wave on earth combines Slater’s attributes like it. A wave were life threatening tubes, searing rail turns, and huge looping aerials are all possible on a single ride. All we need now is some swell. 

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