Legend Kelly Slater, largely absent from the 2024 Olympics – today Morocco

Struggling on the elite circuit, absent from the major qualifying events and caught up in his age, surfing legend Kelly Slater failed to qualify for the Paris Games.

It’s a failure that could spell the death knell for huge star Kelly Slater. Already in Tokyo, in 2021, the first major Olympic surfing festival took place without the man who wrote the most beautiful pages in his discipline. But the 52-year-old Floridian, the legend of his sport, then planned to make up for it in 2024 in Polynesia.
“If I manage to qualify for the (2024) Games, I will retire there,” he announced in February 2023.

Meanwhile, physical problems have piled up for “The King”, 11-time world champion, the youngest – aged 20 in 1992 – and the oldest in history – aged 39 in 2011 – and the holder of 55 competition victories, a record. After struggling with his hip for several years, Kelly Slater finished 23rd in the 2023 Championship Tour, the elite circuit, far from the first ten qualifying places for the next Olympics. The USA’s 9th place finish at last month’s World Team Championships in Puerto Rico, which gave a non-nominative quota to the titular nation, and where he was absent, definitely extinguished the Olympic hopes of the veteran, replaced by John John Florence and Griffin Colapinto.