World Champ Roundtable

Spinksy

October 30, 2013
2 min read
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Cj Joel Parkinson Kelly Slater Mick Fanning spinksysblog surfline World Champ Round Table

Surfline gathers world champs Kelly, Parko, CJ and Mick to shoot the breeze.

It was a pretty simple, though nonetheless monumental idea: Get the world champs together and listen to them talk. Well, you got my ear. So round the time of the Hurley Pro, when all the boys were in SoCal for Trestles, Surfline got four of our 21st century ASP world champions together to converse. (Minus Sunny Garcia, who was on a surf trip, and Andy Irons, R.I.P.)

Out-of-context Kelly quote: "It's almost a little silly to think that a coach is going to tell you how to surf better. Like some guys get coaches to surf better, but if you're at the top then you're not going to find someone who surfs better than you to coach you." Photo: Joanna Miriam — Out-of-context Kelly quote: “It’s almost a little silly to think that a coach is going to tell you how to surf better. Like some guys get coaches to surf better, but if you’re at the top then you’re not going to find someone who surfs better than you to coach you.” Photo: Joanna Miriam

They placed a small table in the middle of a ballroom and Kelly Slater, CJ Hobgood, Mick Fanning and Joel Parkinson sat down and discussed. What, you might ask? Any and everything from surf coaches, to if the tour used to be harder or not, to Dane and Andy, to world champ demands, to other topics that spun out into intense tangents.

As Kelly Slater said, “I think to be the best you can be at something, you’ve got to have a little bit of obsession in you about it.” And damn right if one must be obsessed to win a world championship with the level of talent out there now.

The special thing about this deal, though, was that it wasn’t your normal Q&A interview– a thing all four of these guys have given us a hundred times over the last couple decades. Sure, there were prompts, but the roundtable was more about four guys talking with each other, four guys that have kinda, seen it all in the surf world. Four guys we could learn some pretty interesting perspectives from.

Watch Here – World Champ Round Table Full Video