The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro: Slater Nails Down 9th World Surfing Title

Courtesy Quiksilver

Text by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

Michael Jordan has six world championship rings. Lance Armstrong has seven Tour de France titles.

Posers.

Kelly Slater locked down his ninth world surfing championship on Friday in the Billabong Pro Mundaka in Spain. That’s nine. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9. At age 36, Slater has become both the youngest surfer to win a world title (age 20, 1992) and the oldest. His set of nine is not only unprecedented, the next closest surfer has a piddling four.

Slater has rarely been more dominant than this season. Coming into Mundaka, he’d won 32 of 35 heats and five of the first seven events. Granted, arch-rival and three-time champ Andy Irons hasn’t been a factor this year—he garnered half the points of Slater and hasn’t competed in the last two events—but Slater has been fit and focused and near unbeatable, which is remarkable given his age, time on the tour, and four-year burnout sabbatical from 1999-2002.

“I’m stoked. I just try to do the best I can with what I’ve got,” Slater said. “I had a great year, and it’s nice to be rewarded like this. But besides that it felt like a great year. A lot of good things have happened up to this point on the tour.”

Okay, so Slater isn’t exactly a quote machine. It doesn’t matter—his surfing says plenty. And nine titles says even more.