Excellent People Rating: Kelly SlaterExcellence in athletics is often easier to measure than excellence in other areas; That said, excellence in sports is no less impressive than excellence in other areas. Surfing has been around for hundreds of years, but it wasn't until the last century that it was truly considered a sport. For the past 22 years, one man, Robert Kelly Slater (known as "Kelly Slater"), has dominated the sport. Kelly Slater is by far the best surfer in history; he broke almost every record in the sport and was the youngest and oldest person to ever be named a surfing champion. There is absolutely no debate in the surfing world that Kelly Slater is the best. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essaySlater was born in Cocoa Beach, Florida on February 11, 1972. Kelly Slater was born into a somewhat dysfunctional household with a alcoholic father. Throughout Kelly's childhood, her parents often fought to the point that Kelly and her brother had to leave home. When Kelly was five years old he started surfing and from then on he always turned to surfing for joy and escape. Kelly soon discovered that he had a natural ability for surfing, which helped him have a very lean and flexible body to give him greater maneuverability on the waves. By the age of 18, Slater had won 6 Eastern Surfing Association championships and 4 national titles, giving him a total of 10 amateur championship titles. At this point he had qualified for the professional circuit. Before Kelly joined the professional circuit, he was offered sponsorships from every surf company possible, but he settled on Quicksilver. Kelly lived up to the hype by winning the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Championship in her first full year on the tour. It launched Kelly Slater into surfing stardom. Since 1990, Kelly has won eleven ASP championships and become the most successful surfer of all time. Kelly Slater has broken almost every surfing record in existence, he has won more world championships than any other surfer, he is the youngest and oldest person to ever be crowned a world champion and he is one of four people to score a perfect 20 on the ASP's two-wave rating system (which he did twice.) The measure of surfing excellence is literally a measure. The ASP has designed a points system that includes points from twelve different surfing events throughout the year and the surfer with the most points at the end of the year is champion. Eleven times Kelly has scored more points on the world tour than any other surfer. Kelly knows he's the surfing champion and loves being on top, but it doesn't go to his head. The fight to retain his title is one of the main driving forces for the now 41-year-old surfer. The main elements that make Kelly excellent are her natural abilities, her practice, her dynamism and her motivation in the form of competition. In sport, these four components are often the most important, but other factors can contribute to an athlete's excellence. Over the past 30 years, Kelly Slater has strongly expressed these four components and they have contributed greatly to his rise to the top of surfing. Growing up in Cocoa Beach, Kelly rarely experienced “good” waves. This lack of good surfing conditions would discourage most surfers and they would therefore not surf.