Happy 50th Birthday, Kelly Slater! Surreal to think that only one week ago, Kelly Slater dominated the field at the most perennial proving ground of the surf world, Pipeline. It becomes his 56th professional top tier event win in a highly decorated career that has spanned over four decades.

The moment the buzzer went, the surfing stratosphere went into a frenzy. Goat emojis all over Instagram and WSL commentators declaring Kelly Slater as not only the greatest of all time – the G.O.A.T. – of the surfing world, but the greatest of all athletes across every sport and every time frame.  If you haven’t seen the clip, watch it, it’s pretty special:

In appreciation of him and on the occasion of his 50th birthday, we decided to dive into the claim that Kelly Slater is in fact the greatest of all athletes and really look into comparing King Kelly to other legendary athletes past and present. Let us begin.

What makes an athlete great?

Before we start trying to compare the behemoths of boxing, basketball, tennis and such like with our beloved aquaman, we need to ask ourselves what makes an athlete ‘the best of all time’, and find criteria and a lineup in which to make comparisons. To keep things simple, we are going for: Statistics, championships won, longevity, dominance during their time and fame. 

Naturally, the statistics of said athletes’ careers are a great place to start. They give us facts, numbers and recordings that make it possible to compare athletes in the same sports and give us a good guideline across disciplines. Win rates, average scores, finals reached, the numbers don’t lie. However stats are not everything. For example, in basketball a lesser known Wilt Chamberlain holds a better range of stats over Michael Jordan. Stats can be skewed and manipulated in many ways; after all 90% of statistics are made up, so they say. So whilst stats are important, they are not the only tool to give a fair representation.

The amount of championships won is a great way to measure up who is the GOAT, especially when comparing the same disciplines. It also gives a good starting point for cross comparison seeing as most major sports have a similar format where there is an annual championship with only one team or individual wins. 

Longevity is simple: how long has each potential GOAT been performing in the top tier of their field? Combining that with their dominance over their fellow peers: Did they dominate from start to finish or did they fade out and try to cling on to former glory?

Our last criteria is fame (or stature) which, admittedly, is a little subjective. It is a worthy comparison though, especially when looking at athletes from different eras. It is also a good indicator showcasing just how good an athlete was in his or her respective sport and how that crossed over to worldwide fame and recognition. 

Who is King Kelly up against?

The list of great athletes is pretty long. We couldn’t possibly make this a concise and interesting article if we compared Kelly Slater to every great athlete there ever was. We have therefore made a conscious decision to select six fantastic sports personalities we hope you will approve of.

Based on the criteria above, we will compare Kelly with the following six athletes and then make a cross comparison as best as we can. We have left out football on purpose as we simply couldn’t decide between Pele, Ronaldo and Messi. We’re saving the debate on footballing Goats for another time. 

Sporting GOATS:

• Lewis Hamilton of Formula 1
• Michael Jordan of Basketball
• Usain Bolt of Athletics
• Serena Williams of Tennis
• Tom Brady of American Football
• Mohammed Ali of Boxing

Below: Photo courtesy of SurferToday ??

Before introducing and comparing Kelly with other sporting Gods, it’s a worthy exercise to recap on his career and look into some of his most defining accomplishments and records. These are:

• Surfing on the top competitive tier for 30 years
• 11 world championship titles
• 56 individual top tier event wins
• 8 pipe masters wins
• 2 triple crowns
• 31 perfect 10 rides in competition
• 73.25% heat win % (1136 heats and 832 wins)
• Playstation 2 game in his namesake
• *pauses to take a breath*
• Baywatch TV Star
• Founder of Outerknown surf brand
• Owner of world’s best wave pool 
• Features in hundreds of surf movies
• 2 X games gold medals
• More Qs 5 and 6 Star events than we can care to count
• AND STILL GOING
• 19 Surfer of the year awards.

Not only has Kelly won every achievement in the surfing world, but he has slithered into the limelight in television, movies, become an avid golfer, purple belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, had a brief musical career, established his own successful businesses and wave pool, become an advocate for the environment and marine life and much,much more.

At an incredibly demanding physical sport, Kelly has had to keep the competitive flame burning by harnessing energy from rivalries like he has done with Mick Fanning and, of course, the late great Andy Irons, using mental tactics to maintain a competitive edge over the new surfing generation.

You would think Father Time would be the only thing to defeat Slater, but even time is losing against the champ. Kelly’s longevity is down to in-depth knowledge of surfing, his equipment as well as keeping fit by a variety of sports including yoga and a strict diet that involves such dedication as homemade smoothies with homemade almond milk, Kombucha teas, Chia, homegrown fruit and veg.

Either Kelly has one of the best understandings of yoga and nutrition or he actually has a fountain of youth – the latter is becoming more and more plausible. To get an insight of how yoga goes hand in hand with surfing and a yoga routine we designed specifically for surfers hit the link.

Now our praises to the surfing GOAT have been sung, it’s time for the nitty gritty. 

Below: Kelly Slater keeping limber with yoga before a competition. Photo Courtesy Flickr ??

Lewis is the winningest (hope that’s a word) driver of all time with 103 race wins on the top circuit with 7 championships under his belt and, most importantly, he is still going strong with just narrowly missing out on an 8th title last year. Funnily enough, he and Slater are great friends! Kelly has actually taught Lewis how to surf and invited him to his wave ranch. Click here to read more about it and also learn more about other celeb surfers. 

Surfing and Formula1 actually have very similar formats, perhaps one of the most similar in all sports.  F1 crowns one champion per year as they accumulate points against each other with ten stops on tour and 20 drivers. Surfing also crowns one winner with eleven stops on tour amongst 34 surfers. So, if we look at championships, one where Kelly has eleven and Lewis Hamilton has seven wins, it’s a clear distinction. You could argue that Hamilton has many years left, but the same could be said for the 50 year old surfer who currently is in pole position on the 2022 surfing world tour.

Kelly has been on the tour longer than Hamilton has, and the level of domination between Lewis and his peers is much slimmer than Kelly and his. For example, Michael Schumacher also has 7 titles, but surfing’s runner up, Mark Richards, has less than half of Kelly’s hoard with just 5 titles (May we note at this point that no disrespect was meant to the legendary MR.) 

In the case of Kelly vs. Hamilton, we think it’s a win for Kelly. Next up, Jordan.

Below: Photo courtesy Beach Grit ??

A clear GOAT of basketball, but often referred to as the greatest athlete of all time and without question when it comes to sheer athleticism alone, it’s hard to deny it. 15 years in the NBA that spanned almost 20 years as Jordan took two hiatuses in his basketball career. Remarkably, even whilst retired, Jordan clocks up GOAT points as his retirement from pro basketball was to pursue a career in Baseball with the White Sox. Jordan’s second hiatus from professional basketball saw him act as the president of basketball operations for the Washington Wizards, later returning to the court for two more seasons. An iconic immortal figure across the sporting world, he was so popular and so good on the court that it spilled over into popular culture with Jordan’s sneaker deal being so lucrative, it makes him the richest athlete of all time, net worth sitting north of 1.5 billion. Slam f***ing dunk!

Going head to head with Kelly, where do the stats and achievements stack up? Well, we could go on all day about Kelly’s stats and how they stack up against his peers, surprisingly many would say Jordan doesn’t even have the best stats in his own sport. He is known for being that BIG GAME player and was able to lead the Bulls – and we do really mean lead – to 6 NBA titles.

If, like us, you watched MJ’s documentary “The last Dance” in lockdown, you can see a very similar mentality between Kelly and Jordan. They train hard, they hate to lose, they play mind games, they are self-motivated, they almost cherish rivalries, they wear their heart on their sleeve, they have a beast mode they can harness, they love to play other sports like golf and are just supreme athletes.

Whilst we would like to be biased and say that Kelly has a longer list of achievements in his domain over MJ, we do have to consider that professional surfing is a relatively new professional sport whereas basketball gets taught in most schools across the world, has numerous professional leagues, vigorous training and talent scouting from young ages and is just a much bigger industry. That combined with the fact that MJ, mid-career, was able to casually pick up another professional major sport just is ridiculous. We are going to have to call this one a tie. 

Btw, if you liked MJ´s documentary and wanted to check out some of surfing’s best documentaries and movies check out this list we made.

Eight time gold medal winner, three world records including the 100m, 200m and 4x 100 relay. In a world where records get shattered year after year, Bolt still holds his and, remarkably, in many running disciplines. Surfing is yet to crown an olympic medalist and sprinting does not have an annual championship, so comparing the two is difficult.

On one hand, Usain Bolt’s reign competing at the top is naturally over a shorter time period compared to 30 years+ on the tour of Kelly. His records have lasted on and it’s fair to say that sprinting may receive more competition than surfing. Bolt himself in his early days was a cricketing fast bowler whose speed took him to the world of athletics. 

The two sports are so hard to compare and the frequency of major events like the Olympics vs the annual surfing championship makes it even harder. It’s hard to imagine, but someday it is likely that Bolt’s records will be taken away, but Kellys we believe may stand the test of time and never be overcome. Ever. Once again too close to call.

Four gold medals, 23 grand slam titles, 20 years of dominating her peers. One real significant factor that we must consider is that, across the board, the coverage, viewiship and general interest in sports tilts heavily towards the men’s competitions. Whilst this is not always the case with women’s tennis, it’s very likely a testament to the quality of athletes and, undoubtedly, Serena being a big factor here. When you think of it like that, it’s quite groundbreaking. 

With there being 4 grand slam tennis tournaments a year, it’s hard to compare the trophy cabinet of Serena to Slater so, once again, we look at the dominance against peers in the sport.

Kelly Slater holds 56 event wins more than double the runner up whilst Steffi Graf is only one behind Williams’ 23. Across in the men’s division, Rafael Nadal just took his 21st grand slam. 

One that parallel it’s got to be game, set, match Slater.

Below: Photo courtesey of the BBC??

Recently, Tom Brady announced his retirement from Pro American Football. After more than 20 years competing, Brady has hung up the jockstraps and stepped back from the sport. Often when one of the greats of a sport retires, the accolades are rolled out, praises are sung, tributes are paid and debates about said retiree being the GOAT of their sport flow in. All this was true for Brady except all quiet on debating his Goat status in football which is pretty much general knowledge, even for those who don’t follow the sport.

In the sense of GOAT of their respected sports and longevity in their fields, both Brady and Slater are very similar. But Longevity in sport is one thing. Longevity in hard hitting American football is a whole other, excuse the pun, ball game. In 22 years, Brady has started 314 of the 316 games he has played in. But Tom Brady’s durability in a sport where new talent is forever scouted across the whole country is just the icing on the cake.

A highly decorated career with ridiculous stats that boot 15 pro bowls, seven Super Bowl rings and Super Bowl MVPs, not only does Brady have more titles than any other player, he has more than ANY OTHER TEAM. Marinate on that. For any sports fan that’s what I would call a goose-bump stat. Incredible.

So both athletes stack up pretty solid in terms of duration at the top tier where they have dominated the field. That being said, can you really be the greatest in the world or the greatest of all time in a sport that is really only played professionally in North America, mainly in the USA? Have you beat off the competition from every corner of the globe? Can you call yourself the best athlete in the world when only one country plays that sport? We think that to be a world champion you have to do exactly that, conquer the world by fighting off opponents, from legendary Australian surfers such as Mick Fanning and Joel Parkinson to the Hawaiian legends of Andy Irons and Sunny Garcia. Perhaps this is a little biased as surfing is not as televised as American football, but we give the point to Kelly. Sorry, Tom.

Below: Photo courtesey of Patriots ??

Well, well, well. What can we say here? If ever there was an athlete on the top of everyone’s list for all time GOAT status, Ali is bound to be up there. Funnily enough, Ali does not have the most title defences nor does he have the best record, especially when you compare it to the likes of Mayweather. But how Ali won his titles, how he danced in the ring, his incredible charisma and trash talking, and even the things he did outside of the sport of boxing make him the fan-favorite worldwide.

Ali was at the time the youngest heavyweight champion at the age of 22 and that single image of Ali standing over a floored Sonny Liston with the caption reading, “First Round, First Minute”, might be one of the greatest sporting images of all time.

Ali is and was viewed as a hero and whilst he defended the heavyweight title for years, he also fought off adversity, having been stripped of his titles and the right to box for three years for refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam War as he chose to be an advocate for black rights and fight prejudice and racism at home.

It was Ali’s dominance of the boxing world that allowed him to have this mega platform and become the most influential sports person in history. Even Mike Tyson conceded by saying, “every head must bow, every tongue must confess, [Ali] is the greatest of all time.”

Taking into consideration the prolific achievements of Ali’s career when all the odds were stacked against him fighting bigotry, prejudice and heavyweight champions, it would almost seem blasphemous to claim a surfer would be considered a greater athlete. Conclusion after 12 rounds, a draw. 

Below: Sports most iconic photo? Photo courtesy of Amazon ??

Surfing, like many sports, is an artform and to don another cliche, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder which we take to mean that it is impossible to really claim the title of greatest athlete of all time to just one individual without a controlled environment and consistent markers of comparison.

Tennis has four grand slams per, surfing has ten tour events, boxers fight once or twice a year, each sport has a different level of competition, F1 racers have a whole engineering and racing team behind them, sprinters only have a few years at peak performance.

The debate for this esteemed title will never end and whilst surfing bias will have the whole community claiming King Kelly is in fact THE ONE AND ONLY GOAT, it may not be accepted by fans and journalists of other mainstream sports.

One thing that is certain is that Kelly Slater is the greatest surfer of all time. And from now on, any respectable debate about who is the greatest athlete ever will have to include discussions about the sport we love most. That’s a win in our books.