Kelly Slater.
It’s difficult to imagine surfing without Kelly Slater. And after more than three decades dominating the sport, it’s just as hard for the 11-time world champion to envision his life without it.
But soon, both will need to find a way to move on. “At some point, everything comes to an end,” Slater, 50, tells PEOPLE.
“I think about it a lot,” he says. “It’s a reality, because it’s not far off for me. My competitive flame is burning low, but it can spark up at times.”
It has, time and time again. During the 1990s, Slater crashed onto the scene and won six world championships in seven years before disappearing from the podium for the next half decade. Then, in the mid-2000s, Slater shot back up to win five more world titles in a seven-year span and solidified his legacy as,according to the World Surf League itself, “the greatest competitive surfer of all time.”
“Kelly’s been on tour for a hundred years and has a million wins,” league broadcaster Ross Williams joked, somewhat earnestly, during the season’s opening competition this month near Slater’s home on the Oahu island in Hawaii.
“I don’t ever envision that time in my life where I’m not surfing,” Slater says. “I’ve said it before and it sounds kind of strange, but I’d be totally fine passing away, out in the ocean somewhere, someday when I’m 100 years old. I want to surf until my final days.”
There’s plenty of other things waiting for Slater ashore, like endorsement deals, commercials, and business ventures helping create new types of surfboards and wave pools.
There’s also family. Slater’s daughter Taylor Slater-Kelleher and her husband Sam Kelleher recently moved to Hawaii after their marriage last October in order to be closer to dad. And perhaps Slater will soon follow suit with a proposal of his own to longtime girlfriend Kalani Miller. “Quite possibly,” he smiles. “We talk about it a lot, so it’ll probably happen at some point there.”
Kelly Slater and Kalani Miller.
Miller and their 11-year-old Chihuahua “Action” often travel with Slater, who can’t imagine himself a homebody even when he does retire from competition. In fact, he can already see himself coming out of retirement to challenge his youngerMake or Breakco-stars.
“I’ll still probably surf an event here or there for a few years to come,” Slater says. “I really want to focus my life on going to my favorite places on the planet and maybe getting a boat and doing a lot of it just with a couple people. I don’t know. It’s a never-ending journey for surfers. There’s always another wave and another place you want to go.”
source: people.com
