Kelly Slater: Surfing Icon

30:01And this is when you're a kid or even present day? No, when I was a kid, but it's present day too. You know, I actually was kind of thinking that the other day in my head too. Like if I catch this wave, you know, I don't know. I don't want to talk about it because it's like present time. But, you know, I still have the same thoughts, you know. When I surf, I'm still like a little kid.

30:25Yeah, it's just surfing to me kind of, I don't know, there's just nothing more I love in the world, you know. Everything I do, all this stuff, like all this, I'm only meeting you because I love surfing, you know. Everything that's coming to my life, I would say 99 % of the things that come into my life are all because of surfing. because it's my passion. It's what I love to do. There's nothing more fun than me on earth than to go surfing. So you started surfing around 3 years old. By 14 years old, you're beating professionals that have surfed longer than you are old. What do you think allowed you to become so talented at surfing so quickly?

31:07I think talent comes from, it's sort of a recipe. It's like a concoction of things. you know sometimes people just have good timing sometimes people have a natural talent sometimes they get lucky and there's all these sort of things that can happen I think a bunch of those parts of the formula were given to me in my life so you know I think I was naturally talented I think I was I think I was gifted with understanding the ocean and it comes natural to me you know my my dad was a real water person um and just growing up at the beach watching waves watching guys surf all that kind of stuff that became real natural to me to understand how to maneuver on a wave and fit myself into that as a as if i was a natural part of that energy a natural part of the motion that's happening in the ocean so i was i always felt like there was a i even now I always feel like there's a perfect way to be in sync with what's happening in the ocean you know people look at the ocean they don't know anything about it and they're like that's crazy looking but once you put yourself in this situation you realize there's a flow to everything there's a there's a there's patterns and everything in nature and you know it's deciphering those and then putting your own spin on it that is important I think beyond that I think mentally or emotionally I was in a certain situation that caused me to want to be really good to maybe, I don't know, make everything else seem better in my life.

32:41And, you know, competitively, even in school, I was always able to win things, you know, like running races or, I don't know, I could just, I always felt like I could set my mind on something and achieve it. Like I could, I can visualize things and trust that they're going to happen. I think everyone can do that, but maybe some people don't put the trust in that they're going to happen. But, you know, I had one happen to me the other day. I just, I could feel, I wanted a certain thing to happen. I was surfing that contest in Hawaii and I just wanted to get a tube. You know, we talked about Brock Little who recently passed away.

33:24Brock was one of the biggest mentors in my life. of everyone I've ever met. And in 1990, he got a barrel at Waimea. And it still is like one of the all-time standout waves as far as surfers are concerned. He had two waves that day, one big giant one he fell on and another one he got barreled on. And I was just in this contest the other day thinking, I just want to get a barrel for Brock, you know? And it was my very last wave with about five minutes, 10 minutes left in the heat. It was the last wave I was able to catch in the contest. And I got a little tube. and I don't know I just felt like I could feel it was going to happen beforehand you know I don't know if that's a miracle or if that's just natural you know I don't think it's like a miracle I think it's like I think what I'm saying about natural natural order to things you know either you're aware and tuned into things or you're not and sometimes sometimes I feel like I'm not and sometimes I feel like I am and the other day something just hit me and I'm like I'm to get this wave and it just kind of happened so it's um i don't think it's anything amazing i think it's just i think it's there to be had you know for everyone at all times and um access you know people talk about it in different ways like being in the moment being in the now or living knowing the secret or whatever it is you know whatever however it is you perceive that thing i think i i really think all things are available available to us in the moment and um you know we're either aware or not aware of them your parents got divorced your mom you know was basically responsible for taking care of you and your two brothers and times were tough financially how often would you move condo to condo growing up we lived in this we lived in one house till i was 11 i think 11 or 12 and then we moved moved to another condo for about three years and then we moved in another house for a couple years and another house for about six months and we moved around a little bit um i think we lived in one two three four five five houses between 11 and i don't know 18 years old or something like that so we weren't like moving a couple times a year or anything like that but your mom was telling me she thought it was the day the challenger blew up january 28th 1986 it was a particularly cold day yeah really uh that day and you and your brothers needed coats to go out but she didn't have enough money for three coats for each of you guys to have a coat and so she kept you guys home from school that day and just looking back on it she said she just remembers the embarrassment and the humiliation of you know not being able to send you know her kids to school you know you mentioned like heat or hot water I mean those weren't things that you could kind of rely on consistently during yeah right I'll defend my mom's memory here a little bit the reason we didn't go to school the day the shuttle blew up was because we got back from California late the night before.

36:40And I had actually been in it. My brother and I had been at a surf contest in California. But it was the coldest day of the year that year. We were just tired and slept in. But, yeah, there were numerous occasions where we didn't have the money for things, you know. And one of them was in 1986, that same year, was the world titles, the world amateur titles in England. We didn't have the money to get there. I didn't have the sponsorship to get there. And my mom had this 1938 Gibson gold top banjo that she played. And she actually pawned it to get us the money to go on the trip. And so at the time, I didn't think much about it.

37:34I'm sure it stung her, you know, but I didn't even know. She just, you know, did what she had to do as a parent to get me and my brother to England. I think she sold it for 600 bucks or something, and that thing's probably worth like 30 grand now. Wow. So actually, if you know anyone who has one, let me know. I wouldn't mind purchasing one. How often did she work, and what were the varying jobs that she held? My mom had a bunch of different jobs throughout the years. I mean, at one point when I was about, I guess when I was like eight, she became a firefighter and EMT. She put herself through school to go and do that.

38:13I think she was the first female firefighter in our county.

38:19Then she did that for like two years. She got sexually harassed by her captain and ended up quitting the job. She became a bartender for a little while. and she was bartending at the bar where my dad used to drink a lot. So she kind of got a chance to keep an eye on him and probably get him a few free beers. So it was cheaper for us, you know. And then she worked at the, right around that time also, she worked at the place where, actually I think it was before that, but she had worked at this little food place at the beach where I grew up surfing. and um the islander the islander hut yeah and she she had funny stories about that because by the end of the week when she would get her paycheck she would owe a few dollars for all the money all the food we had eaten so basically she just almost kept it at a certain level where she never she never made any money at that job we ate all of her money throughout the week on a tab how do you think his drinking impacted you growing up yeah it's

39:25yeah alcoholism is a weird thing you know my dad didn't drink a hard liquor he just liked to drink beer and but he would drink beer all day long and he would think he had two beers and he could barely walk you know and um you know he wasn't like abusive to us or anything like that it wasn't like some crazy drunk dad it was just like my dad was like the fun drunk dad in fact he you know When my dad was drinking, he'd come home and wrestle with us. I don't know, most of the time I think about my dad, it's just funny. My dad was kind of the class clown in a way. And he was a super fun dad. He liked to surf, he liked to dive, he liked to go camping.

40:08We'd go into the river and find clams and have barbecues. He just loved to be outdoors. you know but uh you know he didn't have any awareness whatsoever about his issue or how it could be fixed or you know he didn't he didn't have a very good example in his family um of parents you know his parents split up when he was young his mom was married numerous times she died when he was pretty young still um but uh you know my dad impacted me in different ways you know i I sort of looked at my dad as a couple different guys. Before he passed away, he said, he goes, you know, by the time I was eight years old, I knew I wanted to be a father.

40:52I knew I wanted to have kids. And, you know, so he was kind of telling me how important it was that he had children, how appreciative he was before he passed away that he had the three of us, well, the four of us. We have a half-brother as well who's older than us. But on the other hand, he, you know, he showed me, I think I learned from, well, he was, he was a lot of fun. He was, he wasn't a sincere guy very often, but when he was, he was, it was very sincere. You know, there's a really fun side to my dad. I think everyone, to a man, probably almost every single person my dad ever met, they liked him.

41:33um you know but some people didn't you know think he was the greatest guy towards my mom and and uh he was um i don't know he taught me in different ways unfortunately you know some of the ways he taught me was was uh by screwing up and other ways it was by being funny and being a good dad how well do you recall sleeping on the concrete driveway oh that's like yesterday yeah i remember that really clearly what do you remember from it well my parents would get in these sort of knock down drag out screaming fights once in a while and it seemed to be i don't know how often it was you know looking back it seemed like it was all the time but it might have been like once a month i i don't really remember exactly it was just one time i remember it was getting really bad and we were supposed to go to the mall and i was really excited we're gonna go to the mall right after dark and um so we were getting ready to go outside and get in the van and drive and And they started fighting, and I just remember them just screaming and screaming and screaming.

42:35And next thing you know, I realized we weren't going to the mall because it was almost 9 o 'clock, and the mall closed at 9, and this probably started at like 6 or 7. And so my brother and I didn't want to go back in the house, so we just laid down the concrete. I remember just laying down the concrete, kind of my eyes open, but trying to go to sleep and just listening to them scream and yell at each other. Your dad passed away 62 years old after battling cancer for a couple years. and from what I read, you were angry at him for a long time. What did it take to get to the space where you were able to let that anger go before he passed away?

43:10In my early 20s, I realized I had a lot of anger with my dad. I remember particularly in 95, I was 23 years old. I remember just having nights where I'd go to sleep and I'd be so angry at my dad. And I talked to my mom about it one time, and she said, she goes, you know, well, what do you want to do about it? I said, I don't know. I just want to talk to Dad. I want to, like, ask him these things. She goes, look, you can do whatever you want, but you're probably not going to get the answer you're looking for, you know? I just, she's like, I know your dad so well. He's probably not going to answer it in a way that's going to answer anything for you.

43:48You got to, like, answer yourself. What did you want to ask him? I don't know. just like why he drank so much or you know why he was the way he was or you know I don't even really know I just was I just had this anger towards him and I think my mom saying that kind of resolved that for me because I think I realized it was probably true you know he probably couldn't answer things for me that I needed to answer for myself you know it's just a case of kind of growing up and needing to grow into my own skin and become an adult myself and learn responsibilities that you know i think part of it was i there were certain things around the money issues and certain responsibilities of growing up that i wanted to have instilled in me without having to think about it and um i didn't really learn those things so i had to learn them other ways but i also realized i had a lot of father figures around me that were really good that have been great people in my life.

44:44And, you know, Al Merrick, who made my surfboards for years, he was, you know, Al's been such a father figure to me and such a great person to be around and learn from. And Bruce Raymond, who was a boss of mine at Quicksilver,

45:05you know, just a couple families in Hawaii I used to stay with at Johnson's and the Ikes, that would, you know, the dads in those families were such father figures to me, and they were best friends, and I spent a lot of time around them. And I started gravitating as I got older towards families that were really kind of maybe lacking the things that our family had, you know, the parents that were together for a long time and real loving towards each other and, you know, had a real open communication and that kind of thing. So I think subconsciously I just started searching those things out and being able to find them with other people.

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46:43So, yeah. You wrote in your book, there was never a time in my life that I grew so much in such a short amount of time. I stopped thinking the world revolved around me and started becoming a man and a person. when talking about kind of the last, you know, couple months of your father's life. What about that period do you think kind of allowed you to grow up? When your parent dies, you, I think you, there's a, gosh, I'd explain it. It's, you know, one of the most awful feelings in the world. There's also this sort of like sense of like a, just the sense that you've got to grow up and you've got to learn things and you're sort of forced.

47:39You know, there's no direction to go except for to kind of answer things for yourself in some way. There was always that sense that one day I'll ask my dad this or one day he'll tell me this or I'll learn this from my dad. And, you know, there's not a whole lot of things that I look back. Usually somebody says, most people think back on their dad and they go, my dad taught me this, my dad taught me that, or used to say this. When I think about my dad, I just think of all the funny things he used to say. My dad didn't really, he never sat us down and said, listen kids, you need to do this with your lives.

48:09In fact, he was almost completely hands-off in that way.

48:16I think in my early 20s, I was sort of yearning for that father figure, my dad, to come through and kind of rescue me with this perfect answer of what I should do in my life. or something and I think that's what I struggled with after having like financial issues and and you know relationships fall apart and stuff like that but you know it became obvious when he passed away or just in that time before that that wasn't going to happen and I was going to have to find those answers elsewhere and that was okay you know. How's being a father been? uh it's been interesting in my life because just because i'm not a full-time dad i you know the whole time my daughter has been raised by her mother um almost 100 percent uh in physical time and um you know i've been traveling so you know when your daughter's three and you're traveling around the world the whole time you're like you know if you're not coming home every week between In contests, you're not seeing her very much.

49:20You know, she can't just jump on a plane and come visit me. So what's the hardest part of that for you? Hardest part, I think, probably the hardest part for me is my daughter feeling like she doesn't have a dad there all the time. You know, so, you know, and that's hard for her. I know that was especially hard for her. when she was younger. So, yeah, you know, a lot of times people have kids and then their career kind of stops or gets put on hold, and, you know, mine didn't. You know, so I think in that sense, I probably have a little bit of guilt about that, you know, because, you know, kids are just innocent, you know, And so they need to have adults around them to, you know, just to physically be there at all times.

50:24And so I think that's probably the toughest thing for me looking back at, you know, fatherhood. Your late friend Brock Little said about you, Kelly wants people to like him so much that he never says no, but his fame and success don't seem to feel very good to him. What do you think of that? Brock rarely said something that wasn't just spot on or true.

50:55Yeah, there's a lot of things around fame or success that I find. I think if you look at people who are really successful, a lot of times they're doing it for strange reasons. And I'd include myself in that. You know, I think when I was young, I really, I just wanted to be recognized and noticed or something, you know. It was like a sense of insecurity. I wanted to be good at something so that it would, like, cover up any of my own personal insecurities. And so I found that I became, I always felt like I was pretty gifted physically with being able to learn things or do things. And, you know, surfing became my craft.

51:44and I felt like if I surfed really good or, I mean, I'm kind of psychoanalyzing myself a little bit here, but looking back, it makes sense to me. You know, I felt like it would make any kind of personal or family pain or insecurities kind of go away if I was really good at something, you know. And, you know, I could always resort to kind of relying on success, physical success, or, you know, competitive success to make me feel whole or something, you know. I don't know. That's a little bit of an overview or whatever. But, you know, I... And to what extent have you always found that to be true, that the success would make you feel whole?

52:35Yeah, I thought that the success would make me feel whole or whatever, but, you know, at the end of the day, you've got to go to bed and live with yourself, you know, and in your own head. Just because I've had success or won titles or contests or made money, those kind of things, that hasn't made any of the problems or issues that I deal with myself disappear, you know. It just, in some ways, it can probably make them a little more difficult because you're not forced to deal with things. And, you know, I would say most of my conscience and that little voice in the back of my head probably comes from my mom, you know, because I think my mom was the one who always taught me the lessons.

53:28you know she was she would always say the things to me that my dad probably should have said you know or that I thought my dad should have said but my mom was always kind of that voice of reason and she was always the one grounding me and you know and keeping me in line and and I was much more scared of my mom than my dad you know which should be the other way around right you know one time I was telling my friends this story the other day I was surfing my home break when I was a kid my dad was out with us and one of my best buddies was surfing he came to visit me for the weekend to stay at my house and um and we went surfing and this wave came i got this perfect wave and my friend dropped in on me and blocked me on the wave you know just cut he cut me off and made me fall and i came up and i started i was 10 years old 12 years old maybe and i started cussing and screaming every every cuss word i could think i was screaming at him and uh you know i thought it was so cool because i was just like cussing my friend out and i look over about 20 feet away and my dad's sitting there looking at me and he's just like shaking his head and I just held my breath and went underwater and I just stayed under as long as I could and when I came up my dad was about for a media away from me sitting on his board and he's just waiting just patiently and I went back underwater and I like trying to pretend I didn't see him and I came back up and I was like okay well I guess he's not going anywhere and you know I just kind of like looked at him like oh what are you gonna do and he goes don't ever let me catch you doing that don't ever let me hear you saying that stuff again or i'm gonna tell your mother i was like oh no don't tell mom but well you know my mom had a sailor's mouth my you know it's hard to get mad at your kids when you do the same things you know i mean And, you know, it was any parent who, like, smokes weed or drinks or whatever, if they find their kid doing the same thing, it would be hard for them to get mad at them.

55:22You know, my mom cussed as well as anyone. But the idea that my mom was going to get me, going to hear what I said to my friend was so terrifying. And, you know, because my dad really, he was such a cruisy guy. He, you know, he was never going to do anything to me. He was, my dad was like the most accepting guy in the world. And he right there. Did they yell to me? I love you, Kelly Slater. Oh, is that what he said? There's a whole group of people out in the street right now. Oh, really? I thought I heard something about a sweater. And he loves your sweater. Oh. There was a period of time where just because of your single-minded commitment to the sport, you would go pretty much months, I think, without calling your mom or your brothers.

56:17I mean, what was the mindset during that time? There were times where I felt like my mom was peering into my life a little too much and, like, making two strong opinions of my life. So at one point in the mid, you know, there's just this point in the mid-90s, mid-late 90s where, like, a lot of things came to a head for me in my life, and I was trying to figure out my relationships and my friendships and my family stuff. And my mom and I started butting heads really kind of heavily around it. And at one point I didn't speak to my mom for like six months. And, you know, I felt like she kind of crossed the line with me telling me how to live my life.

56:59And I was trying to figure it out. And, you know, I probably wasn't man enough to just grow up and say, oh, maybe my mom's right. Or even if your mom's not right, you've got to tell her she's right, you know. And you got to just go, let it go. You know, moms are just trying to look out for you. But, you know, I was struggling with being my own person and finding my own identity. And, you know, unfortunately, our relationship suffered a bit for a while there. What was that process like for you of just finding yourself and your own identity? To find my own identity, I kind of had to, I felt like I had to have a little bit of like tough love with people around me somewhat.

57:39Why? Well, because, you know, I was resentful about the money situation we had had where, you know, basically all my money was gone. And, and then, you know, also trying to have my mom tell me how to do things and why to do things. And I started, I kind of, well, you know, I did Baywatch and I didn't, I was, well, I was very reluctant to do it. I really didn't want to do it but my mom and my manager at the time really wanted me to do it and and he more or less just signed me up without me approving it and I don't know how that happens but in my life at that time that happened and I was so embarrassed that I was gonna have to do the show and I just really didn't want to I wanted to go surfing and I wanted to win contests I wanted to be a professional surfer and and that was it, you know?

58:29You know, I wasn't trying to go be an actor, and you know, surfing wasn't some launch pad to acting. It was, surfing was my craft, and that was what I was good at. I wish I had been a little more mature and being able to deal with that, but I didn't have the skills at the time. The danger that's inherent with your sport, I mean, we can go to the contest recently in Hawaii, the Big Eddie. how scared were you at times of that i don't know i wasn't real when i was actually uh in the contest yeah the waves were massive the other day it was it was pretty scary but it was more scary the lead up to it you know the night before when you hear because we call the what happens we call these buoys there's these buoys offshore a couple hundred miles off or 10 miles off or whatever you know there's a few different buoys in the ocean so you call you look up online or you call these buoys and it tells you the height and the interval between waves and from that you can determine how big the waves are going to be.

59:26So the night before we're calling the buoys and we see this buoy pop to like 20, 26, 25 or 26 feet at like 19 seconds which basically means it's going to be freaking huge. That basically just translates like 50 foot faces, something like that oh really yeah so what are the nerves like you you think you could get hurt or oh no i mean no the nerves are you think you might drown or get in a really dangerous situation um and also that pressure's on you to go out in one hour to go catch four waves you know that that contest you get to surf twice for an hour each and you get four waves um so you know you want to put on a good showing and you want to honor the people that put you into the event and and you know I also had a little bit of funny nerves because Brock passed away the week before and Brock was really like Brock was Brock was the guy who showed Shane and myself and all of our group of friends all how to surf big waves and how not to be scared and you know well as Brock would put it just don't be a you know so you know Brock just made fun of us as kids because we didn't surf as big a wave as him and so brock was the king of our group of guys and um you know brock led the pack he was always the guy running the show and showing us how to do it and he would drive his truck faster than you and he would surf a wave bigger than you and he would go and fight anybody and he would you know brock was completely fearless as far as i know like he's probably the most fearless person I've ever met in my life.

1:01:08He became a stunt guy, worked on almost all of Brian Grazer's films for the last 10 or 15 years. In fact, you could probably spot him if you really were, if you could really tell who's who in movies, you could probably spot Brock in quite a few movies like The Da Vinci Code and blah, blah. He actually has a line in the movie in The Da Vinci Code where he's a French cop and he's speaking French. He's like, I didn't know what I was doing. He goes, I don't even think I said the thing right. But yeah, Brock was our hero, man. He was just like the most fearless guy I ever met in my life with absolutely everything.

1:01:48So he passed away just the week before. And so it was an exciting week for us that a swell was coming. And we call that the Brock swell. It was also a sad week leading up to that. and I was kind of nervous because I was just like, you know, I just want to, I don't know, I was just feeling a little bit, I was feeling pretty mortal last week after Brock passed away, so yeah, it was kind of just a, it was a funny week of emotions for me. Where's the most dangerous place you've ever surfed and what made it dangerous? Most dangerous place I've ever surfed? I would probably say it's either Pipeline or Mavericks up at Half Moon Bay.

1:02:42I would say Pipeline because a number of things, it's shallow, it's an intense wave. Quite a number of people have died there. Drownings or getting knocked out, hitting your head on the reef. and then drowning, obviously. In fact, a friend of mine got knocked unconscious and basically drowned this winter and was saved by a guy who saw him in the water. And had that guy not been there, he would have, like, I would say 99.9 % for sure have died. Luckily, this guy just happened to see him and grab him and had swim fins on and was able to keep him above water and get him to the beach.

1:03:19Half Moon Bay, Mavericks, There's been, I know a couple of my friends have died there. How? Drowning. Two friends of mine drowned there. Mark Fu in 94 and Sian Miloski just a couple of years back, a few years ago. And explain what a Maverick is. Well, Mavericks is the surf spot. It's just a big, giant wave that kind of just, it's way bigger than pretty much all the waves around it. just the way the swell hits there and the way the bottom is contoured. But also the, there's also rocks. There's been multiple great white attacks there. There's been two or three great white attacks there. So it's just, it's got every element of fear.

1:04:02The water's cold.

1:04:06It's one of the most intense waves you'll ever see. And now there's a lot of people surfing it, so you have to deal with the crowd issue. Pipeline, you also are dealing with the crowd issue, and that kind of changes your choices. and, you know, there's been a lot of guys injured by other people's boards or running into people or, you know, sometimes when there's that many people, you get a little nervous and you kind of make the wrong decision. You don't want to hurt someone else and you don't want to get hurt by someone else. So, like, the whole decision process changes quite a bit when that's the case.

1:04:37How badly did you hurt yourself when you knocked yourself out in France not too long ago? Yeah, I got knocked out. I laugh about it now, but I had to use all my brain power to not get post-traumatic stress disorder afterwards because it was kind of scary. I almost had two-wave hold down. Like I came up and the second wave broke on me as I came up. And I thought it was kind of funny because the waves weren't very big and I basically had a two-wave hold down. A two-wave hold down in surfing is kind of like, it's kind of a badge of honor. You know, once you've had a two-wave hold down, you've had a really heavy wipeout.

1:05:11but this one was kind of funny because the waves were real close together so it wasn't really like a proper two wave hold down but my very next wave I took off on and I did a turn off the top of the wave and the wave just kind of bent away from me so my board kind of got air and flew out of the water and I did I just judged it wrong and I over rotated in the turn and when I fell I fell backwards and my my board separated from my feet and went below me and I fell backwards and hit my head and got knocked out instantly and just hit my head myself super hard back here and uh i i woke up unconscious i woke up from being unconscious i was underwater still and um uh yeah i don't know i just woke up and and um it was kind of like i was in the twilight zone i felt like my whole vision in life was like this tiny little tube of light and all of a sudden kind of like just was getting wider and wider my head my ears were ringing and stuff and I realized I was underwater I guess because you know just for whatever reason you have like a mammalian reflex to hold your breath when you're underwater so I like uh I guess as I came to I realized I was underwater so I didn't breathe and I just started swimming and I kept swimming and swimming but I didn't know which way was up and I swam so far I was starting to get more I was starting to kind of like become conscious more and more, but I was still like, felt like I was dreaming.

1:06:36And I realized, gosh, I've swum so far. I've swum like six or seven strokes and I haven't hit air. I don't know where I'm going. And my hand kind of, I felt my hand just barely kind of go above the water. So I kind of reached my face in that direction and tried to take a breath. And I kind of breathed half foam and half air. and then um i came up and i i just was i started going into shock really fast and uh i just grabbed my board and turned towards shore and the next wave hit me up towards the beach and luckily i was close to shore and as i hit the shore i fell off my board and the next couple way like one one or two waves rolled me kind of like i was just laying in the water kind of getting rolled by waves but i knew i was safe at that point um and then uh i kind of uh it was a really bizarre feeling because um with the contest in town there's a lot of fans you know surf fans there and stuff right and so there was this about 20 yards behind me there was this really high seawall and there was about 100 french people on there and they were like yelling my name and taking pictures and stuff and nobody realized that i was injured and so it was really that's why i say it's like a twilight zone because i was like i was like in kind of going into serious shock and um you know potentially could have just drowned right then and um uh and and so i'm on the beach kind of like absorbing like this whole thing and there's people like yelling my name and taking pictures and i'm like i'm like laying on the beach i'm like laying there kind of completely startled at what just happened realizing i'm really lucky and then i took my leash off had my board luckily I had a board, a leash on my, connected to my board, but I was sitting on the beach and I was on dry sand and I took my leash off and I got really scared.

1:08:17I realized like, okay, now I'm definitely in shock because when I took my leash off, like the surfboard was kind of like, I guess like my lifeline in the water, you know? That was the one thing that was going to make me float or have somebody find me if I was still knocked out. And so when I took it off, even though I was on dry sand, I got really scared and I was like, oh man, I'm so messed up right now. So I kind of, I kind of I had sand all over me because I've been like rolling around the sand and stuff so I kind of waded back into the water and washed myself off and then I sat down on the beach for about three or four minutes my buddy came in my friend Ross came in from surfing and and he was kind of like oh you're done now and he looked at me and he goes man are you okay and I'm like no I just that I explained what happened to him he's like man your eyes are like kind of rolling back in your head and I was like yeah I just got so knocked out and uh so we walked up through this crowd of people and as soon as I got up by this up the stairs all these people were grabbing me and trying to take pictures of me and stuff and I just got I started yelling at people because I was just like give away just everyone get the hell away from me nobody you know they didn't know right they had no idea something bad just happened to me and so I felt kind of bad but at the same time I was like in shock so I didn't know what was going on is that the closest you've been to ever drowning or uh no I got really hurt I got knocked out once when I was 19 uh for a longer period of time I think this one was only for a few seconds or maybe just like it might have been instant I don't really know a friend of mine was on the beach and saw me fall and said he almost ran into the water to go get me but he saw me pop up so it must only been a couple seconds that I was under um but any and even one second unconscious underwater is a bad second but I had one where I was unconscious I think for about 30 seconds in Java one time when I was 19 and um I got amnesia from that actually.

1:10:03I had amnesia for about 12 hours, which was pretty frightening. Especially when you're on a boat in the middle of nowhere and you don't know where you are or how long you've been there. Did you think that was, I mean that could have been it? Uh, yeah that could have been it. But you know it wasn't. How about closest call with the shark? Obviously the footage of Mick from a while back is pretty amazing. Yeah, I think the thing that happened with Mick was a close call from me too, I'm guessing. You were there only moments before. Yeah, I was right where Mick was. I surfed right where Mick was for an hour up until about two minutes before that happened to Mick.

1:10:45And I had been in a heat with him for half an hour. I lost, so he went on shore to kind of get some drinks and get reset for the final. and I stayed out surfing for that half an hour break. So I was surfing right there that whole time. And to give context, he's just in the water and all of a sudden Mick. And all of a sudden. No, to give context, yeah. Shark pops up. He paddles out for his heat, him and Julian Wilson. Julian, the heat starts, me and a couple, there was only like three or four of us in the water at the time, maybe five people had surfed in that half an hour period of time. And me and one of my friends came in right as we got to the beach.

1:11:21It was about a couple minutes into the heat starting. Right as we hit the sand, I just saw the boats and jet skis going over in the lineup. And I couldn't hear what was happening. I didn't know what was happening, but I said to my friend, there's only one reason boats would ever go in the lineup during the heat, and that's got to be a shark attack. And so we ran off the beach, and sure enough, they were screaming and yelling. I mean, by that time, we knew Mick was fine and everything was okay. this is probably two minutes after it happened within a minute and a half two minutes we knew mick was okay and um so everyone was kind of just gosh that was close but then we sat there and watched the footage and then there's the shock of afterwards you know mick shock afterwards and and um you know i mean a whole world watching something live like what are the chances what are the chances that wasn't in some random heat in the beginning of the contest that maybe Maybe a few people are watching online or something, but not like everyone focused on the final in this contest at Jeffries Bay.

1:12:24Well, there's been a number of shark attacks. Let's be honest. There's been quite a few shark attacks there over the years, but never during a contest. And what are the chances it's going to be one of the two guys? I mean, there was other guys. There was 20 other guys surfing down the point somewhere. And the other weird thing about it was that the director in the booth at the time said, get a one-shot close-up on Mick. and right when they went to that one-shot close-up in the live thing is when the shark thing happened. It's just so bizarre. I mean, it was all... Man, Mick had such a crazy year.

1:12:57Poor guy. He had such an awful, strange year last year. Now it's been reported his wife and him have split up, but that was happening a year ago. He had the shark incident. He just narrowly lost the world title the day after his brother died as well. All these terrible things happened to Mick all in one year. I mean, you've got to commend the guy's resilience for, you know, he's just a good, happy dude. He's just gone through some really tough stuff in the last year. I'm sure it will make him stronger. Mick's already one of the best guys I know. But man, what a radical year to go through. Surfing in the Olympics, it's being considered for the 2020 games in Tokyo.

1:13:47What do you think the likelihood is that it happens? It's been talked about for years. There's been a lot of lobbying going on with some people in the surf world and talking to the IOC. And I know as early as 1984, they came down and watched the world championships in Huntington, some officials from the IOC. It's interesting for Japan because there's a pretty strong surf culture there, actually, that people might not realize. There's some great surf in Japan. I think a wave pool in Japan makes a lot of sense because, and I'm not trying to pitch like, okay, let's just run the wave pool thing and run it in the Olympics, but it would make sense because it gives you, you can have exact start times and you know how to control your field and that kind of thing.

1:14:28Japan has great, amazing surf on its day, but it's a little inconsistent. especially in the summer months. It's the summer Olympics, isn't it? Yeah, so the summertime in Japan can have really slow surf or no surf. It can be really flat for periods of time. That's sort of the, that's just kind of the rule of thumb with the east coast of any country, because all the storms are going west to east. So mostly they're taking waves away from you instead of sending waves towards you. In the summertime, you don't have much storm activity anyways but yeah a wave pool in japan will make sense because when you think about japan you think about engineering you think about technology and all those sorts of things and you know i and craftsmanship is really important craftsmanship is totally important to japanese so it would be uh it would be really interesting if if a wave pool was a was a way to display surfing the first time in the olympics so i mean since you brought that up what's the process involved with actually pitching them on your technology no i don't i really don't know the process because I'm not one of those people lobbying to try to get in the Olympics but you know if it were to happen I'm all for it but if and if it doesn't that's okay with me too but if it does are you there competing?

1:15:44That's yeah that's a good question. I mean how could you pass up? I got four years. It's still four years away you'd be 48 but I mean how could you pass up the time it's finally in the Olympics? I think if yeah I think if we finally do get in the Olympics and I'm physically fine if I don't have injuries and I get chosen by the states to surf in that, it'd be a huge honor. I think especially at that age, it would be a huge honor. And it'd be a great way for me to say, you know, I was in that first one or I was part of that first one when they, I don't think it would be an official sport. I think it'd be like a display sport or whatever, but it'd be a fun thing to do.

1:16:27The single most satisfying moment from your career to date would be what? Gosh, it would be single most satisfying would be when I won my sixth world title in 98. For sure, that was because it shouldn't have happened. It was like, I don't know, the stars aligned. and somehow everything came together perfectly, both personally and emotionally and physically and competitively. Everything just aligned for me on this one day, and it was probably the most rewarding day in my life on a lot of levels. If it was just a competition, it wouldn't mean so much, but there's a lot of stuff going on personally for me too that was amazing and wonderful, And so that would all have to be a part of that.

1:17:25But yeah, competitively, that was the peak of it all for me in a lot of ways. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks a lot. That's all for my chat with Kelly Slater. To see more content from my time with the surfing legend, go to youtube.com slash Graham Bensinger. You can see Kelly take us on a tour of his fashion headquarters. And we also got out on the water to surf some waves. or in my case, attempt to. Before you go, if you get a chance, give us a rating and review. Thanks again for listening.

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