The Comp Thread

<div class="article-content">Every December, Kelly Slater is asked if he’ll compete on the following year’s World Tour. Kelly don’t do halves and if he’s competing, then it’s for a title. Each year his responses are coloured with coyness, and each March everybody – fans, ASP and competitors alike (winning a title without Kelly on tour ain’t as sweet) – hopes he’ll show up to Snapper looking resolute. But we won’t stop asking.And what else is up with Kelly right now? There was that round three loss at J-Bay to Matt Wilkinson, and more interestingly, the total nonchalance with which Kelly behaved afterwards. A man usually so compelled to win, disarms when he accepts (or appears to accept) an early loss so calmly. He joked afterwards about Wilko getting slower waves, he charmed the mainstream media, and talked freely to spectators and fans. He looked a man in a happy place.We wanted to know about Kelly’s feels towards the tour right now, what his opinion on the Jeremy Flores incident is, or Jordy Smith’s early J-Bay loss, and how Mr Slater’s feeling about 2015 in general…Interview by Craig JarvisStab: Something’s changed. Your contest head is laissez-faire at the moment. Fair?
KS: Well, I am struggling to be excited, and it probably shows. When the waves are good, like here in J-Bay, it’s easy to want it, but I definitely need some more purpose put into my desire to compete. I’m at a real crossroads with it all.Is there is still hunger for a 12th title? To be honest, I’m not sure it would really change anything for me to win the 12th. At the end of a year it is rewarding for the time you’ve spent if you finish on top, but my perspective is changing for sure. What seems important at one stage in your life can feel very far from that at another.Do you have an opinion on the Jeremy Flores incident? These things should be addressed, and not be brushed over. It’s not tolerated in other professional sports. Sometimes we want to have a reason to blame our failures on other people. One time in Japan in ‘92 I had a heat with Sunny that was a potential title decider and I got a priority paddling interference. It was a super lame call and sunny and the judges knew it. I rushed the judges’ stand and started punching the door and screaming. I don’t know what I was gonna do or how it was gonna benefit me, but it seemed right in the moment. If Jeremy gets suspended for Tahiti and then narrowly misses the tour cut this year, he’ll be able to point the finger at his suspension. I hope he digs himself out of that position and holds himself accountable instead. (Some time after this interview, the ASP announced Jeremy’s suspension and fine. Jeremy has accepted the punishment and held himself accountable.)
<div class="wp-caption alignnone"> We still aren’t used to the lack of mountain and wave, but the oop suaves are certainly familiar. West Oz. Photo: Ryan Miller