By Jack Burden

The Waterski Pro Tour lands in Georgia this weekend, bringing world-class skiing to Poti — a city steeped in history, now staging its sporting revival on the Black Sea. Golden Lake, surrounded by the crumbling concrete shells of a bygone empire, will host slalom and jump finals under the lights on TWBC.

Just two hours inland lies Gori, birthplace of Josef Stalin, and Poti itself was once a Soviet naval hub before years of neglect left its infrastructure to rot. Today, the aerial view looks like something from a post-apocalyptic film: vegetation reclaiming vast concrete blocks, with a pristine waterski lake cutting through the middle.

“The city of Poti, it was a cradle of water skiing,” said Mikheil Gioradze, the tournament’s executive director. “The sport in this country started from right here. People around here consider water skiing almost part of their identity.”

He didn’t shy from the region’s turbulent history. “As it happened in all the countries of the former Soviet Union, after the collapse of that evil empire the countries went through very hard times. Everything went down, nobody was looking after this place. And here we are today, trying to revive it… to bring this historical place and this sport back to life.”

Gioradze calls this first Poti Pro the beginning of a larger rebirth: “We really want this place back on the sports map of the world, and we very much hope this Pro Tour will be the start of a new era.”

Fifteen skiers have made the journey to Golden Lake despite a modest prize purse and a clash with the WWS Overall Tour in Austria. Italy’s Thomas Degasperi and Brando Caruso headline men’s slalom, while New Zealand’s Jamie Metcalfe and Ukraine’s Danylo Filchenko bring international firepower to women’s slalom and men’s jump.

For Poti, and for water skiing, the symbolism is undeniable: a sport nearly forgotten here is rising again, in Stalin’s homeland, from the shadows of the Soviet past.