Kelly Slater, Portugal

Ladies n’ gents, he’s done it again. The champ has won the Rip Curl Pro, Peniche, and the only thing now lying between Kelly ‘K10’ Slater and his almost-inevitable 10th world title, is a coupla well-placed heats. And the champ sure has adapted his surfing to the hi-fi gen. The alley-oop has now reached a stage where unless it is fully-rotated, it’s essentially viewed as a chop-hop above the lip. Jordy, Dane, Julian et al stomp these things on the regular, and now it looks as though KS has gotten his head around the hi-octane spin. Though the waft above wasn’t a land, the sequence you see below most definitely was – a flair that Chris Davidson deemed worthy of salute, almost in respectful acceptance of his loss in their semi final (from which this sequence was taken). After the heat, Davo voiced what was likely a widely-asked question around the event site: “What can you do when the King pulls something like that?” The final saw Jordy Smith place second to Kelly, which is looking more and more likely to be an projection of the end-of-year ratings. Kelly has but to place highly in a handful of heats throughout the remainder of the tour leg, and close his crushing grasp on the world title. The only question left to ask is, will 10 titles be enough to quench this natural-born competitor’s eager thirst? – Elliot Struck