The greatest surfer in history, Kelly Slater, once again criticized Olympic surfing on Graham Bensinger's sports show, in an interview that was broadcast earlier this week.

Slater said he had his thoughts on the Tokyo 2020 qualification process and how some of the best surfers are going to be left out: "The only thing I'm really worried about is the fact that I'm not going to be able to compete in the Tokyo XNUMX qualifying process."  (…) is that there will be some really good surfers left out, because of the way the qualification process happens. Brazil has like five of the top ten guys in the world right now and they will only be able to send two to the Olympics.”

“Then the waves can be really small. Japan is a bit tricky at that time of year. This year, in the same week that the Olympics are going on next year, they had waves that were waist high. So it could be a real challenge for all the competitors. I hope that won’t be the case,” Kelly added.

He also touched on the fact that the event will take place in the sea and that a pool would have solved the challenge: “I was quite surprised. I try not to make too strong an opinion because I am part of a company and that would be very biased, but at the same time, I thought that we should have had the pool as a possible way to compete, in case the ocean was not going to give waves. So, I think it is a good option for sure. I thought it would make a lot of sense for Japan, because they are such a technologically advanced culture. I just thought that since it is a new sport they would present it in a new way, I was thinking that way, but that didn’t happen,” he added.

The 11-time champion concluded by referring to Japan's high levels of radiation and the slaughter of dolphins.