Today, 11 February 2022, is a day that calls for a decent bottle of bubbles to be uncorked and enjoyed, and at some point in proceedings, that is exactly what will happen at our household.
Firstly, it’s Kelly Slater’s 50th birthday, and what an extraordinary week he’s had leading into it. Secondly, Life of Brine turns 500. Yes, dear readers, this column came modestly into the world on 27 April 2012, at the request of the founding editor of a lively new local paper called Noosa Today.
Although it was to revolve primarily around the surfing life, editor Izzy Coleman gave me license to riff on other subjects, funny or sad, spice it up with hot gossip and generally have fun with it. Some 500 columns later, I’m still having fun with it, and hopefully its generally cheerful and cheeky tone is still amusing readers.
Now back to the GOAT. A couple of weeks back I gave the Greatest Of All Time a bit of a raspberry on this page for dropping in on a surfer on a perfect Backdoor Pipe wave. (For which Kelly had apologized before we went to print.) Last Sunday I had to wipe the tears away as an emotion-charged Slater threw everything at his Billabong Pipe Pro final against a surfer less half his age who is already acknowledged as the new and fearless master of Pipe.
It was extraordinary stuff, and for fans and friends of Kelly, it was an emotional roller-coaster, as it often is with the GOAT. If you questioned the spirit of an almost-manufactured interference called against Miguel Pupo in Kelly’s semi-final (and I did), you could only put that aside and gaze in awe as Slater and Hawaii’s Seth Moniz hugged like gladiators before heading out, already exhausted, to fight to the death – at least figuratively – in big, gnarly, wind-affected Pipeline at its most dangerous and unpredictable.
Kelly was as fired up as I’ve ever seen him. Even his great mate, Strider Wasilewski, reporting from the channel, couldn’t believe how much of himself Kelly had invested in this 40-minute heat, muttering mantras to himself, splashing water and giving situation reports to the Waz as he paddled past at full throttle. Then he let it rip, scoring a nine for a technically perfect deep Backdoor barrel (after which he buzzed the beach on the jet ski assist and fist-pumped the crowd like Medina on steroids) and backing it with a solid seven to combo his young opponent inside the first 20 minutes.
Seth Moniz is no easybeat at Pipe – at 24 he is already one of the greats – but it took him until the final minute to show it, when these two incredible athletes, a generation apart, traded near perfect scores for deep tubes, giving the big crowd a glorious finish to one of the greatest surfing contests I’ve ever witnessed.
Think about the circumstances of finals day. To get to it, he had to be content with a first round second behind Australia’s Jack Robinson, 23. In the third round he crushed rookie Jake Marshall, 23, then won a tight battle against rising Hawaiian star Barron Mamiya. Last weekend he faced off first against Japan’s Kanoa Igarashi, 24, a silver medalist at the last Olympics, in the quarter finals and beat him easily. Next he met Brazil’s Miguel Pupo, 30, in the semis and, despite the unfortunate interference call that cost Pupo half his second score, Kelly was always going to win.
After two previous 35-minute heats in difficult and taxing conditions, just six days shy of his 50th birthday, wearing just a hint of a spare tyre around his middle, the greatest surfer of all time paddled out and kicked butt. Can you imagine being one of those talented young men who became collateral damage, and being told that your next round heat is against a 50-year-old. In any other circumstances you’d have a smile from ear to ear, knowing you’ve got a free pass to the next round. Not when we’re talking about a rampaging Kelly Slater, quite possibly the greatest athlete of all time in ours or any other sport.
It’s 30 years since he won his first world title, 30 years since he first won Pipe. The GOAT was giving away nothing but tears of joy at the beach presentations, but could he go all the way to his 12th world title in 2022? You can’t rule it out.
As we went to press the Pipe Pro women’s finals were held in slightly smaller but still challenging conditions. Hawaiian wildcard Moana Jones Young dispatched our Tyler Wright in the semis and went on to beat world champ Carissa Moore in the final. More next week.
FOOTNOTE: Craig McGregor, one of Australia’s finest journalists and authors, and a keen surfer in his day, passed away at Byron Bay at the end of January, aged 88. Over the 50 years since I first met him in the back bar of the Hotel Canberra in 1972, he was a friend, mentor and inspiration. Apart from his many invaluable contributions to Australia’s cultural and political history, Craig is the only person to have co-written books with both Midget Farrelly (This Surfing Life, 1965) and Nat Young (The History of Surfing, 1983).
I cherish all my signed copies of Craig’s books, and particularly his inscription in Soundtrack For The Eighties (1983) when he advised, “Don’t look back, says Bobbie.” Craig was a Dylan tragic, so perhaps the last word should go the Nobel Laureate, who referenced Craig’s gentle, avuncular style in a cover blurb for Left Hand Drive (2013): “Craig is hip to the hip but not really hip.” RIP Craig, gone but never forgotten.
