Kelly Slater is arguably one of the greatest surfers the world has ever seen. A career spanning multiple decades that has seen him announcing retirement many times in 20 years is itself an achievement. Slater is the world’s oldest active pro athlete alongside Kazuyoshi Miura, and as he loses to a 22-year-old at Sunset Beach, the 52-year-old once again called ‘quits’.

Kelly turned pro in 1990 and has won the World Surf League Championship a record 11 times. He also has 8 Billabong Pipeline Masters titles, the last one coming at the age of 49. But what is more interesting is that King Kelly has continuously threatened retirement each year since 1998.

Kelly Slater’s latest retirement threat

It’s been 13 years since Kelly Slater’s last World Title win, and the age, of course, is the other reason for retirement. So, when is King Kelly retiring? After he was narrowly beaten in the Hurley Pro at Sunset Beach by Australia’s Ethan Ewing, the 52-year-old expressed that he was questioning his participation. “I am questioning competing to be honest with you“, he said in a post-heat interview.

Slater further revealed he had gone into the waves without having practiced for the last five or six days.”My confidence isn’t super high. I’ve probably surfed four sessions since [the Lexus] Pipe [Pro]. And I haven’t surfed in about something like five or six days“, he added. However, a week ago, he called his recent hip surgery the reason for his decline in form. While it looks unlikely Slater will retire at least before the Paris Olympics, he has also repeatedly hinted at retiring in recent years. So, maybe all is well.

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King Kelly’s recent retirement threats

Last year, in an interview with Guardian Australia, Kelly Slater said that if he made it to the Olympics, he would retire. But months later in September, he quashed the possibility when expressing his excitement for WSL. In 2020, the 52-year-old had expressed similar plans regarding retirement. Saying that he would retire after the Tokyo Olympics.

Two years before that, in 2018, during Joel Parkinson’s retirement, Kelly also announced that he would officially quit after the end of the following year at the age of 47. But he once famously narrated a story that explains the reason behind his never-ending era.

“I’ve been thinking about that for 15 years. I will say even my mum texted me and said ‘Maybe you should think about it’. She goes ‘but then again, I said that to you before and you came back and won the world title that year’”, he revealed in 2016. Although age is catching him up, it would be exciting to watch him at the Paris Olympics.

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