By Jack Burden

The storm had blown through. The lake flattened. The crowd, swelling with anticipation all week, angled in for a clear view of the skier many consider the greatest of his generation. After seven world records and nine consecutive professional overall titles, a Joel Poland world crown was beginning to feel like a foregone conclusion.

His toe pass was vintage Poland: powerful, explosive, all big tricks and high-octane energy where most competitors rely on precision and speed. Only a slight miscue at the end hinted at vulnerability. Then came his hand pass — his strongest suit. Commentators couldn’t help but bring up the ghosts of two years earlier, when he submarined on his signature super-mobe-five, only to mount one of the most famous comebacks in World Championship history.

But this time, Poland never even got that far. Midway through an otherwise routine sequence — mobe, mobe, half-jack — he stumbled on a front flip, one of the most basic tricks in his arsenal. Suddenly, the man who makes the impossible look effortless was swimming, staring in disbelief as the moment slipped away.

On the shore, images of Poland sitting slumped, head in hands, echoed the heartbreak of 2023. For the swashbuckling superstar who has turned everything he touches to gold, it was another inexplicable collapse on the sport’s biggest stage.

Since claiming his first world title in 2021, Poland has been untouchable on the professional circuit. He has entered 14 pro overall events, winning all but two, and hasn’t lost a WWS Overall Tour event since October 2022. Tricks — the most cutthroat of the three disciplines — have been the foundation of that success.

In 26 rounds of tricking on the Overall Tour, he’s dipped below 10,000 points only twice, both back in 2022. Across 35 pro starts in tricks, he’s failed to hit that mark only once in the last three years. His career average since 2021 sits comfortably above 11,000. Most remarkably, he has never missed a final at a professional overall or trick event.

Measured by consistency, no male tricker can match him. Pato Font and Matias Gonzalez have piled up more outright wins, but neither boasts Poland’s 80-plus percent podium rate. As Joel himself has put it countless times: “Overall’s about not screwing up.” For half a decade, no one has been better at not screwing up.

Except, it seems, at the World Championships.

For the second straight cycle, Poland’s Worlds campaign unraveled in tricks. The contrast couldn’t be sharper: invincible on the Tour, error-prone at the marquee event. It’s hard to reconcile the two Joels — the unstoppable force who has redefined overall skiing, and the athlete undone by the same mistakes at the same tournament.

This wasn’t always the case. Poland burst into public consciousness with a triple-gold performance at the 2019 Under-21 Worlds, nearly breaking the world overall record in the process. Later that year, he shocked pundits by medaling twice at the Open Worlds. His defining moment came in 2021, in a gladiatorial duel with Dorien Llewellyn that ended with Poland setting a new world overall record to clinch gold.

But since then, Worlds has turned from proving ground into stumbling block. Whether it’s the weight of favoritism, overtraining, or just cruel coincidence, no one — perhaps not even Poland himself — can explain why the sport’s most consistent tricker has reserved his only missed finals for its most important event.

Poland’s misstep reopens an old tension in water skiing: is the World Championships truly the measure of the world’s best?

Many argue no. After winning Worlds in 2023, Freddie Winter himself admitted he had spent the year chasing Nate Smith, usually finishing second to him on Tour. By every measure of consistency, Smith was the best slalomer that year — yet Winter walked away with the title that mattered most.

There’s logic in rewarding consistency. Series and season-long circuits, like the Waterski Pro Tour, offer larger sample sizes that cut through the noise of off-days or lucky breaks. By that standard, Poland — undefeated for 11 months in jump and two years in overall, breaking multiple world records, and banking more prize money than anyone else — is indisputably the best skier on Earth. No one, male or female, has been more dominant in 2024 and 2025.

But the counterargument carries weight too. Not every elite skier can travel the Tour. Financial realities mean many of the sport’s best — Nate Smith, Regina Jaquess — skip most pro stops. The Worlds remains the one event where the entire field gathers, each athlete peaking for that week. Its self-fulfilling prestige lies in that convergence.

For Poland, the paradox endures. By almost every metric, he’s the standard-bearer of modern skiing — a generational talent redefining what’s possible. Yet on the one stage that crowns legends, he has twice fallen short.

Maybe it’s fate. Maybe it’s the cruel symmetry of sport. Or maybe it’s just a reminder that no matter how inevitable greatness feels, nothing in the World Championships is ever guaranteed.

The World Championships run from August 26-31 and will be broadcast live on TWBC.