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For a few hours Kelly was in every sense, The-Man-In-The-Box. |
The man in the box, Kelly covered from every angle, water, air, boat and land. Pic: Billy/SurfingWA
“I didn’t look at it at all (before going out)”, Kelly Slater coolly told media after his super session out the infamous West Australian slab known as The Box, this morning [just north of Margaret River].
The champ, who’d just smashed out a dominate win his second round heat of the Telstra Drug Aware Pro, had indivertibly created a media storm this morning that could be likened to a circus. All thanks to a morning free-surf. Amazing.
The plan, hatched the night previous, was that if Kelly did chose to tackle the shallow right hand barrel multiple cameras on boats, jet skis, in the hands of water-photographers and even a helicopter would be ready to capture his every move. The surfing freak didn’t let anyone down and dragged his night-owl bones out of bed early and systematically surfed the place like it has never been surfed before. “I didn’t see him fall once or make any sort of mistake”, local lens-man Russell Ord told Tracks. He threaded every barrel from as far back as you could possibly sit.” Big wrap from a guy that’s shot (and surfed) the joint for years.
Kelly obviously enjoyed the session as he cheekily added, “It (The Box) is the original slab wave – I don’t want to put any pressure on anybody… but is there any chance we could move the comp there?” Hearing crickets from the organisers (and goofy footers – not really) he finished with, “The Box is great…. I haven’t surfed it in 20 years, but it was good fun out there.” Yeah, if your idea of good fun is falling over the ledge on a 6-8 foot death slab that nearly goes dry before spitting its guts out into a deep old sharkie river mouth. Freak indeed.
