Here's something a little different: KL and KS share a sofa and an extended rave about Final's Day, plus of course various digressions to injuries, potential Championship Tour formats, Teahupoo for the Olympics, and many other topics I've already forgotten.
"That board felt like the starting point for a new life."
The inner mechanics of Russell's mind.
Sniffing out the bounty on land and at sea.
From a day with a low wave count yet high consequence.
Like a hundred social media clips joined together but not on social media.
Seeking darkness on a sunny day.
And Matahi lifts the bar yet again.
Bite size humans in king size waves.
Comments
Thanks that was well worth a view
always love it when kelly waxes medical extensively, makes me feel better about missing some knee menicus and toe chilblain and just deal with it.
Glad you shared this would have got lost in the finals thread.
Anyway, great video, at about 35 minutes in Kelly talks about injuries and airs, i was thinking about this the other day, i think Filipe has made a very conscious decision to minimise airs to only when really needed to reduce risk of injury.
As realistically that window between 20 to 30 is when they have the best chance of winning titles, if you can keep injury free you have a much better chance of getting titles.
Injuries can happen in all kinds of ways but airs are higher risk, and one injury can derail a whole title campaign, even two if late in the year.
Take JJF for instance, in the early days he seemed like he could have been the next Kelly, amazing surfer in every way, no weakness but sadly injuries have prevented him from what could have been.
He is now 30 with only 2 world titles realistically he has roughly 5 years to get more and even then from now on in every year would become a little harder with age.
Yep. As Kelly said about EE , his carved game peaked , but he doesn’t have the “air reverse “ mayonnaise to the extent of other competitors to win title.
And the blokes that do have learnt form theirs and JJF experience have to budget out the use of injury inducing air moves over a career.
True, there's so much lateral/twisting load landing big airs. I wonder if they incorporate any training purely to strengthen everything to do with knees.
Sure they train for it , but would need those wile e coyote muscle legs to stand up to all those air landings on a changing surface every time
Fkd hip would explain alot re. Slat's performances over last couple of years.
Thought he might have been carrying something last year or so..seemed a little stiff through his turns.
Will be interesting to see if past 50 he can regain some of that spritely energy that used to come with his small wave surfing post op. Personally i hope so.
Good watch.
"90% of the time, the best waves win the heat.... unless your Filipe..." K.S.
So the best way for WSL to improve all pro surfers chances in their comps, is to run in consistent good - excellent waves. Good comp waves my even improve WSL revenue in advertising & sponsors.
That was relatively small sunset I seem to remember it being way more chunky.
Kelly lavishing praise on Filipe and also Gabe. I agree the world champ should be offered a spot in the Eddie. Kai an extremely intelligent & emotionally balanced guy.
Filipe in the Eddie. Now THAT I want to see. HAHAHAHAHA
He would not accept it knows he hasn't the skills. The rests of the surfers must love it when it gets gnarly they all have fils number.
I enjoyed this also.
Did anyone see the interview with Tom Curren during comp?
Seemed to take longer than it should lol.
Slater has thought so much about surfing the amount of detail coming out of his mouth is crazy. I wonder if he ever just goes out and cruises.
Another level of respect achieved for Kai. So many people appear star struck with Kelly but he's not scared to put forward his opinion and also not change it if Kelly disagrees. Like you said mem the nuances that they see so clearly are phenomenal