What is Wakeboarding
Wakeboarding emerged from Waterski and surfing in California and changed the World of classic Waterskiing as fast as Snowboarding did with the snowskiing back in the 90's. The idea was pretty simple: being pulled by a boot while riding a surfboard.
But the regular Surfboards were too long so they developed the so called "Skurfer" that established a mix of a waterski and a surfboard. The "Skurfer" was ok for a dynamic ride but it was very hard to ride these heavy boards.
1990 was the real birth of Wakeboarding.
Herb O'Brien the owner of a waterski company built the prototype of the wakeboard - the Hyperlite. Compared to the "Skurfer" it was a flat board with small volume that was more easy to control. The natural form of the "Hyperlites" was devoloped to a symmetric Twin Tip Board with finns at both board ends. The new generation of boards was more simmilar to a Freestyle Snowboards then to a surfboard. In 1990, too Jimmy Redmon the guru of wakeboarding founded the World Wake Association (WWA) in Winter Park, Florida. Two years later wakeboarding became an official sport as a sport promoter from Florida founded the "Pro Wakeboard Series". This professional series growed from year to year.
At all wakeboarding seems to get the alternativ for all snowboarders in the summertime. With over 50 Cableways out of 180 world wide Germany has the capacity that is commparable to 1000 boats.
But what makes wakeboarding so popular?
In contrast to waterski wakeboarding gets up into the air. The short flexible board allows radical jumps on a never seen level. The difficulty of the exprenssiveness, creativity, aggressiveness and the heigh of the jumps are deciding. This makes the spectators go crazy. In the USA wakeboarding - raised to TV reports -has got a high significance. Since wakeboarding was accepted at the american X-Games the wave swept to Europe, too. The media and the sport industry, too accepted wakeboarding as a trendsport long ago .
In 1997 Swatch and O'Neil started the Wake Attack Tour which was the first tour that open the sport to the public. Because of the big success of the Wake Attack Tour and the more and more growing Community the european and german foundation in 1997 decided to forward the new trendsport and the first national and international contests were held in 1998. The first World Cup Series came to Germany in 1998 and a inofficial European Championship was held at Cable and boot.
Further the European Wakeboard Tour, the European Cable Wakeboard Tour an the German Wakeboard Tour were created. The big breakthrough came in 1999 when the German Wakeboard Tour was held. Over 45 TV placements and 110 reports in print magazines beyond the bounds and made the people recognize wakeboarding. Thausends of enthusiastic people took part of this contests and gazed the spectacular jumps.
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