Time & Tide

They wait for no man –except Kelly Slater. MH hit the beach with the surfing deity as he prepared to hang up his wetsuit after four decades on the waves, to dive into how he has remained at the crest of the sport for so long – and how he finally found calm amid the storm

- Jamie Millar

ELLY SLATER IS ARGUABLY THE GREATEST ATHLETE OF ALL TIME – AND HE IS INARGUABLY THE GREATEST SURFER, IDOLISED BY LEGIONS OF FANS AND DRAWING HUGE CROWDS TO THE BEST BREAKS AROUND THE WORLD. But today, he is on his own. He sits in the front row of a small plane flying from Johannesburg in northern South Africa to Port Elizabeth on the Eastern Cape, a black hoody pulled over his head. After disembarking, he waits to collect his luggage from the belt; when an elderly woman’s bag topples over, he nimbly drops into a half-squat to scoop it up. He wheels a surfboard-shaped silver case into the car park. There’s no hint of the entourage that typically orbits elite sportsmen. There isn’t even a driver with a sign.

“I hate that shit,” he tells me the next day. We’re sitting in the back garden of a beachfront house in St Francis Bay, a short distance from Jeffreys Bay, where the Corona Open J-Bay – one of the original and best events on the World Surf League’s Championship Tour – will start tomorrow morning. Slater sometimes travels with companions – his girlfriend, swimwear designer Kalani Miller, or a photographer – but he has “sort of become a loner” over the years. “I used to travel with my group of friends, but then they all fell off tour, starting families and stuff,” he says. “Eventually, I became the only guy left.”