Kelly's Retirement

The enigma that is Kelly Slater continues to baffle and improve, and as a product he is now basically unstoppable. Maybe he should run for US President or office of some kind as very few people globally will hear a word said against the 'king' of surfing. As I have said before, I am a fan of Kelly's surfing, what he stands for and his general countenance as a human being. That said, the man seems to be shifting his goals and subtly adjusting his priorities.

Let me explain why I think the last 12 months have seen a change of direction for the champ.

Kelly is a master of misdirection , in competition and maybe in life and business too. Let's look at his year in 2015, which was one of the worst competitive years he has ever had hands down, but he did launch a clothing label (Outerknown), a wave pool project (The Kelly Slater Wave Company) and now his own surfboard company (Slater Designs). OK, so the wave pool thing has been coming for a long time, but that amazing clip he released (which easily looked like the best artificial wave that we have seen ridden) was released in December.

While everyone in the surfing world was busy worrying about who was going to win the world title race, Kelly was working on all these other things. Misdirection. He barely even looked bothered when he got knocked out of the Pipe Masters in Hawaii, perhaps because he knew that he had the (KS Wavepool) video bomb to drop. After that I find I have to really think hard about who did win the world title last year.

I have to be very careful about how I write this as I know a lot of people blindly follow Mr Slater and don't like him being cast in anything but gleaming sunlight from above.

I will get to the point now. What I am saying is that for the last 6 or 7 years the question on everyone's lips has been 'when is Kelly going to retire from our sport?' In after heat interviews and magazine articles he would be constantly asked the same question. When? Well I believe I have the answer. I think now is the time that he is going to retire. The last two years' business moves have all been about a slow transition into retirement. I reckon that Kelly will still go to the WCT events, but not really be 'in  it to win it' and, if it's small Brazil or France, he may not even attend.

The World Tour is such a good stage to advertise yourself and your potential fledgling businesses, and if there is something the champ loves to do, it is to compete, but now it's with a completely different motivation. It is quite brilliant really. If he wins another world title on a Slater Designs board then wooow, can you imagine?

Because of what he has achieved in his surfing carreer already, a 'comeback' is not off the cards, and as I have mentioned before, his following is gigantic and actually includes me. The whole change in focus just goes to show again how you can make the world turn for you, if you want it bad enough.

Personally I would just settle in being able to surf half as good as him. Long live the champ.