11-time World Surf League (WSL) Champion Kelly Slater has been announced as a presenter for the 2022 Academy Awards, which takes place on Sunday, March 27. Slater will present alongside snowboarding legend Shaun White and skateboarder Tony Hawk.
Slater is the greatest competitive surfer of all time with an unmatched 11 WSL Titles. He is both the youngest and oldest World Champion in men's surfing history after winning his first title in 1992 at the age of 20, and his last in 2011, at 39.
At age 50 Slater continues to compete on the elite WSL Championship Tour (CT) and is currently ranked No. 2 in the world, thanks to his 56th career CT victory earlier this year in Hawaii, just six days before his 50th birthday last month.
With an eye on his 12th World Title, Slater must maintain his position on the rankings and finish the ten-event CT season inside the Top 5 in order to qualify for the one-day, winner-take-all, Rip Curl WSL Finals in September.
The WSL CT is the highest level of competitive surfing. It is a global series of competitions where the best surfers on the planet compete for the undisputed World Titles. The CT begins in Hawaii, and stops in Portugal, Australia, Indonesia, El Salvador, Brazil, South Africa and French Polynesia, before concluding in San Clemente, California for the Rip Curl WSL Finals. All events are broadcast live on WorldSurfLeague.com.
Slater was also the lead consultant and special correspondent for ABC's "The Ultimate Surfer", a competition series where some of the world's greatest up-and-coming surfers trained and lived together as they battled it out at the WSL's state-of-the-art Surf Ranch in Lemoore, California, powered by Kelly Slater's human-made wave technology, in the hope of competing amongst the best athletes in the world's fastest-growing sport.