Kelly Slater Slid Into Maya Gabeira’s DMs. It Wasn’t To Check If She Was OK

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A post shared by In Depth with Graham Bensinger (@indepthwithgrahambensinger)

Before you lash out at us for publishing old news, the clip above was only just posted to Graham Bensinger’s Instagram.

Coincidence or not, it reappeared just a couple of weeks after we aired Episode 10 of Season 2 of How Surfers Get Paid, titled The Bounty Hunters.

The excerpt comes from Bensinger’s In Depth interview with the Brazilian tow surfer and touches on an unsolicited DM from Kelly Slater following her near-death experience at Teahupo’o in 2014, from which she survived with little more than a fractured nose.

Gabeira was heavily criticised by Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton, two names nobody would argue belong on surfing’s Mount Rushmore, alongside Andy Irons and Jadson Andre.

Slater’s criticism may have been amplified by two earlier incidents: a serious accident at Teahupo’o in 2011, and Gabeira’s 2013 blackout at Nazaré following an unsuccessful rescue attempt by her then tow partner, Carlos Burle.

In The Bounty Hunters, Burle discusses the event in detail, including another confrontation between himself and others, and Gabeira and her then boyfriend, Sebastian Steudtner, while perched on jet skis floating over the Nazaré canyon in code-red conditions.

Watch The Bounty Hunters.