Kelly Slater Biography

Kelly Slater, born on February 11, 1972, is a professional surfer from the United States who has won the World Surf League title 11 times. Kelly Slater has achieved 56 victories on the Championship Tour. Slater won the Laureus World Sports Awards Action Sportsperson of the Year title in 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2012, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025. By age ten, he was winning age-division events along the Atlantic coast and captured his first U.S. championship title in 1984. Two years after his junior world amateur championship placement, he secured third in the junior division in England and claimed victory in the Pacific Cup junior championship in Australia the subsequent year. Slater finished sixth in the 1993 rankings but went on to win five world titles consecutively from 1994 to 1998. In 2022, he claimed his eighth Pro Pipeline title at the Pipe Masters in Hawaii, 30 years after his first victory there.