SURFING: Wildcard Kelly Slater stars as Tahiti Pro opens in unruly surf

Surfing's 11-times world champion Kelly Slater showed he still has what it takes to foot it with the best at the Tahiti Pro on Saturday, scoring the highest heat total of the first day in huge and wild waves.

The 54-year-old, who retired from full-time competition in 2024, clocked up an excellent two-wave total of 16.23 out of 20 to advance to the second round and into a mouth-watering match-up with Brazil's three-times world champion, Gabriel Medina.

"It's sort of like riding a bike, but you forget how gnarly Teahupo'o is," said Slater, who has won the event five times in 20 appearances. "We didn't get time for any big waves this week and all of a sudden, you just jump right back into it."

Teahupo'o, which translates roughly as "wall of skulls", hosted the 2024 Paris Olympics surfing event and is considered one of the world's most perfect waves.

Saturday's conditions were far from perfect though, with big unruly swells and strong cross-shore winds taking the already challenging lineup to the next level. South Africa's Matthew McGillivray and Morocco's Ramzi Boukhiam suffered some punishing beatings in their round one heats before Slater took to the water against Hawaii's Eli Hanneman.

In waves nudging triple-overhead, Slater dominated, scoring a near-perfect 9 for a long, deep tube and backing it up with a 7.23 for another stylish and technical barrel. Hanneman's "highlight" was a terrifying wipeout, leaping from the top of a beast of a wave into oblivion and leaving his board impaled with chunks of coral.

"There's some intense waves out there. You've got to be ready," said Slater, who won the last of his 56 world tour events at Hawaii's Pipeline in 2022.

Local Tahitian Kauli Vaast, who won Olympic gold here in 2024, was another to shine in the challenging conditions before competition was called off, with more big, powerful waves expected in the coming days.

-Reporting by Lincoln Feast in Sydney; Editing by William Mallard/Reuters