How long can Kelly Slater, star of Stab In The Dark X and, less famously, the greatest competitive surfer of all time, remain the topic of conversation at stabmag.com? Indefinitely, one suspects. He is, after all, the most fascinating and formidable of lab rats. But for our fragile neural circuits, let’s linger on Kelly one last time, in all his scheming, elegant, slightly terrifying glory. This week, Stab co-founder Sam McIntosh joins Dane and Dooma at the Stab Mic desk. They start where the conversation had no choice but to go: Kelly’s selection of his own shaper, Dan Mann, as the shaper of the decade, and the fallout that ensued. Though Sam encouraged him to cut his own shaper’s board, which is the gentleman’s agreement for every previous edition of SITD, Kelly was naughty. He raged against the system and left his Mann in play. Sam defends him: deceptive, mercurial, infuriating, sure. But a liar? Must be a brilliant one. We’re treated to SITD marginalia: Sam marooned on the beach counting Kelly’s 147 waves, navigating the small cruelties of doing business with Kel, while Dane recalls a Hawaii heat where he had Kelly on the ropes, head held to the flame, until Kelly conjured a buzzer-wave and clipped him anyway. The lads also muse with perverse delight over Kelly’s body, debate his T-shirt size, his multiple invites and refusals to Diddy parties, the possibility of his name in the Epstein files, and the tale of Sam getting slept by a former pro surfer. Enjoy the episode.
