We’re massively stoked for Joel Parkinson to have won the Pipeline masters but we have to admit, it would have been awesome to have Slater as the ASP Tour champion for the twelfth time. It’s a tough thing in any profession, let alone professional sports to get the highest award going just once, but to do it 11 times is just outrageous. He’s already a hero to everyone who has ever paddled out into the waves, as much for his competition riding as his downtime activities and the way he uses his profile and his connections, like those with GoPro, to help out where he can.
Kelly Slater and GoPro are a charity dream team
Over the course of last weekend, Kelly Slater made the most of his continuing relationship with GoPro to help raise much needed funds to help with the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in the US. For every tweet that was tagged with #GOKelly GoPro donated a dollar to the cause, up to a maximum of $10K. That’s a huge donation anyone would agree. They’ve not released information about whether they have reached their goal yet, but we’re pretty confident they have judging by this tweet from GoPro.
Just a few tweets away from our goal of 10K for @wavesforwater for Hurricane Sandy Relief. Put us over the top! Use #GoKelly and say thanks!
— GoPro® (@GoPro) December 15, 2012
The man is clearly a hero, and there’s no better way to showcase that than by using some of the world’s best action camera equipment to record the man doing some insane stunts on beautiful looking waves. The tech folk at GoPro rigged up a series of cameras in a line to produce some fantastically angled and aligned shots. All we can say is that if this is the way action sports videos are going, we’re all in favour of it.
