Future World Champions? November 7, 2013 – Tags: , , , ,

Future surfing World Champions. An interesting thought came to me while talking to a friend the other day about where the surfing world is headed, with the arrival on the scene of guys like John John Florence, Julian Wilson, Gabriel Medina to name a few.
Obviously all of these guys are extremely talented & in some way or another the future of pro surfing. But an interesting thought came to my mind, after the fact of a very cliche thought, that is questioned across all sports worldwide. Who is the next _______ in our case of the sport of surfing Kelly Slater. Does this person exist? My first thought was one of the guys i mentioned at the beginning, for obvious reasons, qualified early, unstoppable on their day, have all won contests etc etc.
The next thing that came to me was the way they surfed & i honestly believe that these guys are capable of doing things that no one [even KS] before them has ever done, including mixing up the rail to rail, pit packing surfing that is required of a World Champ.
A great example of any of these guys is JJF. The full package you would say, in this case talking from a technical point of view, all the skills & arguably most comfortable in the barrel out of anyone on tour. When he is on song you can see him taking down anyone & if he lined it up week in week out he would certainly get a swag of titles.
Now the reason for all of this beating around the bush is this, my theory is that it will be next to impossible know matter how well you surf to get 11 world titles. The level of surfing has changed , has become more radical & is pushing the boundaries, even the elastic limbed super kids are injuring themselves making there dreams of world titles, or the best video section come true. Obviously guys will string years together & get titles but 11 times is probably a push.
If you take a moment to look at who has been injured even this year is astounding, John John missed part of the year due to injury, Owen Wright pretty much missed the whole year, i think Felipe Toledo was out being a top guy of tomorrow, i haven’t researched this so don’t quote me but i’m guessing there is even more.
The end point being that i believe as a relatively uninformed by stander that surpassing Kelly Slater’s eleven world titles is impossible, due to the nature of the sport & the vulnerability to injury, which gave me plenty to think about. Not too mention that Kelly will probably end up with three or four more anyway, considering he is still in the running for this one! Interesting times ahead no doubt, its a great time to be a surfer , fan of, or both!
Thanks