Wakeboard

History of the discipline

The wakeboard, created by Fine Tony and then called " skurf" , appeared with beginning of the year 80. The principal goal of this sport was then to be able to find feelings of slips comparable with those of the sports in vogue at that time (skateboard, snowboard, surfing) without needing particular weather conditions (snow, wind, swell…). Sportsmen thus created a board similar to a board of surfing while adding to it of the toe-clips of board to veil: the skurf had been born. This sport could thus be practiced on all the water levels: lakes, water levels artificial, rivers, sea and behind any engine machine.

In 1996, the French federation of Water skiing recognizes officially the wakeboard and creates a commission of which the objective is to structure the development of this discipline. Trainings of judges and initiators are installation. France accommodates the Championships from Europe to Borough-in-Bresse in 1999 and the first Championships of the World organized by the International federation of Water skiing in 2000 with the Grande Motte (34).

In 2001, the wakeboard is one of the disciplines of the Worldwide games of Akita in Japan.

In 2003, the first Championships of Europe of Wakeskate were organized with the Large-Mound (34).

In 2006, the championship of the world of Wakeboard Cable (which was held on the nautical ski-lift JetLake de Feldkirchen in Austria) crowned one to wrinkle French: Laurent Peyrichou of the TEAM Fonchy of Cergy-Pontoise which thus becomes the first French world champion of the discipline.

Practice of the wakeboard

The material

Boards

Instead of using skis, the slide block uses a board which ensures more bearing pressure to him. On this board two are fixed fit (fixings) for the feet in the direction length as for a Snowboard or Skateboard. This floating board measures in general between 130 and 147cm length and 45 cm broad (i.e. shorter and broader than those which one finds in the Snowboard). It is also convex, contrary to the boards of Snowboard, concave, and is provided with moulded or removable ailerons of various sizes.

The wakeboard since its beginnings enormously evolved/moved with the level of the boards: the first boards of surfing, asymmetrical, became, following the example evolution in skateboard, symmetrical boards, or " twin tips" , equipped with drifts on each side of these boards. The materials also improved: appearance of new materials replacing the resin of the boards of surfing, like " the nest of abeille" or, the " fusion core" the weight of the boards reduced.

Fit

Fit, slippers or " boots" in English play a very important part for the wakeboarder. Their structure, their composition, their form make it possible to increase considerably at the same time the comfort of the slide block, but especially its precision and thus its performance.

Fit have, like the boards, summer largely modified since the beginning of the discipline. In the Eighties, they were manufactured using toe-clips of Planche to veil, and then raised more of the protoype that of a model finished of fits. Even if this type of fit presented enormous disadvantages, in particular related to their brittleness, their lack of comfort and especially the absence of accurate check of the trajectory of the board. They were used to create a great number of basic figures of the wakeboard, like certain figures requiring the baring of a foot, such as the Judo Air, which are not almost more realizable today.

With the development of the discipline in the Nineties, fit them evolved/moved in direction of the Water skiing, by taking again their materials (rubber and Néoprène), their attachment unit on the board, functioning with inserts. But they also differed from these last, from their form on the one hand, much broader and opened with the end, and from the width of their fixing plate, which could not hold on a water skiing.

It is in the line of this differentiation that fit them present generation find their place, by taking again more and more characteristics come from the Snowboard, in particular with an attachment unit on the similar board, one fits higher, and a structuring of this one with new materials more rigid than the rubber, like by other aspects, in particular esthethic.

This evolution towards a particular range of fit especially dedicated to the wakeboard improves not only comfort, the precision and the performance of the wakeboarders, but certain specificities are also now taken again by the manufacturers of fit Water skiing, the system following the example of of lacing of fit.

Boats of wakeboard

With regard to the boats, there exist models especially adapted to the practice of the sport: first of all those are equipped with a turn which makes it possible to fix the cord of traction at 2m top approximately compared to water. They are also equipped with ballasts in order to be able to be weighed down and an especially studied hull, all that to obtain a wake equipped with higher waves. Once to wrinkle it having taken its care to leave the wake, this one quickly accelerates towards the wave in order to use it like a slope to be able to carry out jumps and other air figures.

With the image of the Water skiing, the " glisseur" (says itself of a practitioner of sliding sport) is drawn behind a boat or by a nautical Téléski, with 21km/h.Les boats is equipped with a sisteme of quoque good special.

Figures of wakeboard

As in many extreme sports such as the Snowboard or the Skateboard, there are a series of terms or expressions specific to name these figures (ex: backroll, frontroll, tantrum, elephant, whirlybird, 360,720,…). Each one of these figures can at the same time be realized in heelside or toeside when the figure is begun respectively in catch from care late (i.e. in support heel, or vis-a-vis the boat) or before (i.e. in support toes, or back with the boat). They can also be declined in switch if the slide block began them in the direction opposed to its natural or usual direction.

Similar sports

Kitesurf : the board of kite-surfing the most used is a derivative of the wakeboard
Water skiing
Wakeskate: smaller board but appreciably of the same form as a wakeboard, with the difference close there is not fit. A rough coating makes it possible to hold on the board: one approaches the style thus to slips of the skateboard.
Surfing
Wakesurf: approaches more of surfing but for the riders far away from the sea or the ocean. The board does not have fit and the swing bar is just used to leave water. The slower speed of the boat generates a larger surfable wave.
Kneeboard : board similar to that of the wakeboard, on which you are with knees.

External bonds

wakeboardmag.net - Gate wakeboard (FR)
wakeboard.asso.fr - AFW - French Association of Wakeboard (FR)
unleashed.fr - free French Magazine (FR)
wakeboarder.com - Gate wakeboard (US)
ffsn.fr - Gate of the French federation of Water skiing
Estawake - Competition of Wakeboard and demonstration of FMX with Estavayer-the-Lake
Wake' NR Jab - Site of the riders of Jablines (FR)
Wakeboard on artificial lake (FR)

http://www.wakeboard.be/

Photograph gallery

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