{"id":851256,"date":"2026-08-11T09:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T09:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/851256\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T09:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T09:20:15","slug":"surfing-great-kelly-slater-beats-gabriel-medina-at-tahiti-pro-setting-up-heat-against-australian-jack-robinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/851256\/","title":{"rendered":"Surfing great Kelly Slater beats Gabriel Medina at Tahiti Pro, setting up heat against Australian Jack Robinson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kelly Slater has advanced to the third round of the Tahiti Pro after the 54-year-old American overcame Brazil’s Gabriel Medina and \u200bsome heavy wipeouts at the 2024 Paris Olympics venue of Teahupo’o.<\/p>\n

Slater’s emotional Margaret River exit<\/a><\/p>\n

Surfing legend Kelly Slater holds back tears as his career effectively ends at Western Australia’s Margaret River Pro, although the 11-time world champion is hoping for one last wildcard in Fiji.<\/p>\n

Slater, who recently underwent hip surgery, retired from full-time competition in 2024 and welcomed a third child earlier this year \u200bbut showed he had \u200clost none of his competitive edge against three-times world champion Medina.<\/p>\n

In dangerous, challenging waves, Slater got smashed on his first attempt and was hit even harder on \u200chis second wave, breaking his board in two.<\/p>\n

But the Floridian recovered \u2060and threaded a long, deep tube that scored a 9.73 \u200cout of 10 to take \u200bthe lead.<\/p>\n

He \u200cthen backed it up with another excellent score to advance over Medina, who beat Slater in an epic final at the same venue in 2014.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know if I’ll ever have another heat with him, and \u200bhe \u200cgot me last time,” said Slater, who dominated the first day of competition.<\/p>\n

He said he had been motivated by criticism of the \u2060decision to award him a wildcard \u200cto compete.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

“You see those comments, \u200ca lot of people doubting me or saying [the opportunity] should have gone to \u200ca local wildcard,” he said. “Even after all this time, I have something to prove.”<\/p>\n

Slater finished with an excellent two-wave \u200ctotal \u200bof 19.06 out of \u206020 to set up a third-round meeting with reigning champion Jack Robinson of Australia, who was pushed hard by countryman Callum Robson in round two.<\/p>\n

California’s Griffin Colapinto, who was born six years after \u2060Slater won the first of his 11 world titles, was the only man to better Slater’s \u200cperformance in \u200cthe second round, racking up a perfect 10-point ride \u200bon his way to a season-high heat total of 19.6 out of 20.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kelly Slater has advanced to the third round of the Tahiti Pro after the 54-year-old American overcame Brazil’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,421743,54292,117278,588,85,24490,41997],"class_list":["post-851256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-gabriel-medina","tag-jack-robinson","tag-kelly-slater","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-surfing","tag-tahiti-pro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}