Kelly Slater Houdini wipeout recovery
 

Amazing recovery from a near certain wipeout


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Kelly is King. 46 years old and amazing skills.

I used to surf first peak at Sebastian Inlet back when Kelly was about 12 years old. He was already sponsored by a local surf shop. I used to see him up and down the Space Coast of Florida surfing. @ 12 years old he was way better than any guy my age (18) that I was surfing with.


I saw Johnny Knoxville post that clip last night and ask Kelly how the hell he pulled that off. Kelly had not answered as of last night.

Yep, Kelly is amazing with his longevity and dominance in the sport.
Eleven times world champion, probably the most in any sport that is this demanding.

Jim it's cool that you were able to surf with him as a kid, these phenomenal athletes often do stand out at an early age.

My experence with that was surfing with Laird on Kauai. His place at the top of the lineup was secure by age 15. And this was in sessions packed with talent.

Pretty amazing recovery in that video.

Cheers Richard

Great documentary currently on HBO
https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/momentum-generation

I can tell stories.

;)

Lets just say the crew Kelly ran with were not very nice. They were a cocky bunch ranging in age from 10 to about 20 years old. We had a run in with them once and I thought it was going to land us in jail. It mostly had to do with respecting your place in the line up, per my bold above, my buddy wanted some rides off the first peak and Kelly's crew decided he needed to be put in his place.

Little known fact, you can punch someone out while outside the break, while on your surfboard. Not my doing but one of my friends who got into it with a guy on Kelly's surf team. Police were called by fisherman on the pier, we did not stick around to see how that was going to play out. It did not end well for the Alpha dog from that surf team.

When I have more time I will tell the story.

Since he was 12 we did not hang out together. I just remember seeing him out in the surf and remember he could shred. He was a legend in Indiatlantic by the time he was 15 years old.

Jeff Crawford owned a surf shop at the corner of 192 and A-1-A called Crawfords Surfshop.

He had a Surfing Team he sponsored that were named after his shop. We referred to them as the Crawfish a play on Crayfish due to many of them being pretty young, Kelly included.


They actually ranged in age from about 10 to 20 years old, the older guys tended to be real jerks.

Backing up, my friends and I were not pros, none of us ever competed, we surfed because we loved to and it became more of a social thing to us than competition.

Most all of our weekends evolved around days on the beach. We were the cats with the cooler full of cheap beer giving them out to whoever wanted some that happened to be at the beach with us. We were a happy goofy fun crew that liked to have fun.

My one friend Joe and I also had a love for weight lifting and Joe was pretty big and really strong.

Joe decided to paddle back over to first peak, we were surfing it early that morning since we arrive around 6 a.m., once the Crawfish arrived they pushed us off of it by cutting us off and calling us names etc.. to intimidate us off and to move down.

Joe paddles back over and starts paddling into a wave, when one of the Crawfish paddles in too and runs right over the top of Joes board sending Joe flying.

Joe paddles back outside and finds the guy, both are running their mouths out there with the Crawfish telling Joe he needs to know his place. Joe paddles a little closer and punches the guy so hard he falls off his board. Joe jumped into the water swims to him and punches him a few more times...

Now everyone is paddling towards Joe, the fisherman are screaming at him, one is running down the dock announcing he is calling 911.. Joe paddles back to the beach, and we all grab our stuff and GTFO of there.

We self banned ourselves from Sebastian for the rest of the summer. There were other breaks but none were as good as first peak.

Joes board was pretty tore up, the guys fins ripped across the top of his board and did some serious damage. Joe was pissed he was either going to have to replace the board or pay a lot to get it fixed.

We never had anymore run ins with the Crawfish, we would see them from time t time and noting more happened, I wondered if this was a regular occurrence for them and they could not keep track of all the people they pissed off.

Regardless those summers were a lot of fun some of those guys and I keep in touch to this day.