



Well, just hours after Joel Parkinson announced his retirement, out comes the champ, Kelly Slater saying that next year will be his last on tour.

During an interview with the WSL, while the JBay event was running this morning, the 11x world champ was talking about Parko's retirement but dropped his own little bombshell. “I'll make an announcement,” said Kelly, raising his right hand. “I'm in round 2, no,” he laughs. “My basic plan is to get myself really healthy, again, get ready for April next year and next year will be my last year on tour and just be done with it.”

And are you surprised? The changing of the guard has been well and truly in motion for some time, Mick, Joel, Taj all gone (or going), it was only a matter of time before Kelly revealed his time was over on the CT.

“I've never had a long time out [with injury]”, Kelly clarifies. “I'm obviously in the back end of my career.” Talking about the set backs with his injured foot, he said: “It's kind of given me direction and made me accepting of the process.”

One more year of the greatest surfer of all time.