If 2025 was about rising performances and recalibrated ceilings, 2026 is shaping up to be about scale.
The upcoming season will unfold across three distinct professional tours, span five continents, and feature more high-level opportunities—and more complexity—than the sport has seen in years. For fans, it may be the most fragmented calendar in recent memory. For athletes, it could be one of the most promising.
At the center of the landscape sits the Waterski Pro Tour, still the backbone of elite slalom competition. Alongside it runs the four-stop WWS Overall Tour, continuing to elevate overall skiing with dedicated events in North America and Europe. And new for 2026 is the Nautique Water Ski World Series, a multi-year concept that begins this season at Botaski in July, continues through Rocky Mountain and the California ProAm, and carries momentum into the 2027 Moomba Masters and U.S. Masters.
It’s a fractured ecosystem—but not necessarily a broken one.
The downside is obvious: overlapping tours, different point systems, and a calendar that’s harder than ever for fans to follow cleanly. The upside, however, may be more significant. More tours mean more events, more prize money, and more chances for athletes to build sustainable professional careers. It also raises the stakes. Titles are no longer concentrated in one place. Rivalries can play out across formats, continents, and disciplines.
In short, 2026 may be messy—but it could also be healthier, deeper, and more competitive than any season this decade.
Below is the tentative 2026 calendar, with some details still yet to be finalized.
The International Waterski & Wakeboard Federation has taken another step in its slow recalibration of policy, voting to allow Russian and Belarusian youth athletes back into international competition.
Following an International Olympic Committee recommendation issued on December 19, 2025, the IWWF Bureau resolved that athletes from both nations will be eligible to compete in all IWWF-sanctioned youth events—defined as all divisions below Open—effective January 30, 2026. The decision applies to both individual and team competitions and permits participation under national flags and anthems, in line with standard IWWF event protocols.
It is a meaningful shift, even if a carefully bounded one. While senior athletes remain outside the scope of this ruling, the door is now fully open for juniors to contest titles and team medals, restoring pathways that had been largely closed since early 2022.
The move fits within a broader, sometimes uneasy evolution of the IWWF’s stance. After initially imposing a sweeping ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes following the invasion of Ukraine, the federation has gradually softened restrictions—first allowing limited participation under the IWWF flag, and now restoring full national representation at the youth level.
The IWWF emphasized that it will continue to monitor developments in Ukraine and review its position should circumstances change, underscoring the provisional nature of the resolution.
For Russia, the timing is notable. Just days after the IWWF announcement, the Russian Ministry of Sport granted water skiing “core sport” status in the Saratov region—the first such designation in the country. Symbolically at least, it marks renewed institutional momentum at home, even as international access cautiously reopens abroad.
As ever, the federation finds itself walking a tightrope between geopolitics and sport. This latest decision suggests a belief that junior athletes, in particular, should not be indefinitely sidelined by forces beyond their control—while leaving open the question of where, and how, the line will ultimately be drawn.
Florida Southern College has announced the appointment of Jason Seels as its new head waterski coach, ushering in a new era for one of collegiate skiing’s most consistent programs. Seels replaces Curtis Rabe, who steps aside after an influential 11-season tenure at the helm of the Mocs.
Seels arrives in Lakeland with one of the most decorated résumés in international jump skiing. He burst onto the global stage with a gold medal at the 1997 World Games and went on to win multiple professional titles, podiuming at consecutive World Championships in 2005 and 2007. A long-time standard-bearer for Great Britain, Seels is the joint most decorated men’s jumper in European Championship history, with 11 European titles to his name. In more recent years, he has continued to compete at a high level, finding success on the Big Dawg World Tour and at the Over 35 World Championships, where he claimed dual world titles in 2016.
Beyond the accolades, Seels is an experienced on-water coach excited to step into a larger leadership role. In a statement announcing his appointment, Seels said he was “fired up to take the FSC waterski team to new heights—building a strong, competitive program while developing athletes on and off the water.”
Seels succeeds Curtis Rabe, who guided Florida Southern to ten consecutive top-five finishes at the NCWSA National Championships and helped cement the program as a perennial contender. Rabe’s impact extended far beyond results: a Hall of Famer in the Florida Water Ski Federation, he brought decades of experience as a coach, official, and international competitor to the role.
As Florida Southern turns the page, the program does so with considerable excitement—and a deep foundation—heading into its next chapter under Seels’ leadership.
The international water skiing community is mourning the passing of Robert Wing, who died earlier this month, at the age of 68.
Wing was a deeply respected figure in the sport—an athlete, entrepreneur, commentator, and tireless advocate whose presence spanned decades and disciplines. Born in 1957, to Bob and Irene Wing, pioneers of barefoot water skiing in Australia, Rob was immersed in the sport from an early age and remained devoted to it throughout his life.
A versatile competitor, Wing participated across barefoot water skiing, tournament waterskiing, wakeboarding, and waterski racing. Even later in life, his passion never dimmed; he proudly represented Australia at the 2022 and 2024 IWWF World Over 35 Waterski Championships.
Beyond the water, Wing founded and led a globally respected wetsuit and water sports accessories company, Wing Wetsuits, becoming a trusted name throughout the industry. He was also a passionate supporter of the sport as a family-centered pursuit, generously backing athletes, teams, and events around the world.
Nowhere was his impact felt more strongly than at the Moomba Masters, where Wing served for many years as a sponsor, apparel provider, and iconic voice in the commentary box. For generations of fans lining the Yarra River, his calm, familiar commentary became inseparable from the event itself.
Tributes have poured in describing Wing as a true gentleman—warm, professional, endlessly generous with his time, and universally liked. As longtime colleague Des Burke-Kennedy reflected, “Everybody liked Rob… I can’t ever remember him having a harsh word to say about anybody.”
Rob Wing is survived by his wife Bronwyn, his children Joel, Amber, and Dominique, and his beloved grandchildren Atheniah, Xander, William, Jamison, Vance, and Audrey.
The International Waterski & Wakeboard Federation (IWWF) has named Joel Poland and Hanna Straltsova its 2025 Male and Female Athletes of the Year, honoring two seasons of near-total dominance at the sport’s highest level.
Both athletes entered 2025 as reigning IWWF Athletes of the Year. Both finished it as world champions, tour champions, and the clear benchmarks for elite jump and overall skiing.
For Poland, the season bordered on perfection. The Briton went undefeated in every professional jump event he entered, capturing both the World Jump title and the Waterski Pro Tour Jump Championship. He was equally untouchable in overall, sweeping the WWS Overall Tour for a third consecutive season without a loss. The year’s defining moment came at the WWS Fluid Cup, where Poland set a new World Overall Record—the eighth of his career—further extending one of the most extraordinary résumés the discipline has ever seen.
Straltsova’s 2025 was no less remarkable. The Eastern European claimed World Championship gold in both jump and overall, securing back-to-back world titles across the two disciplines. She also captured the Waterski Pro Tour Jump title, reinforcing her status as the most dominant women’s jumper in the sport. Most notably, Straltsova broke the longest-standing world record in waterskiing, eclipsing Natallia Berdnikava’s overall mark that had stood for more than a decade.
The Overall Athlete of the Year honors were selected by the IWWF Executive Board from the broader list of 2025 IWWF Skiers & Riders of the Year, announced December 29. Both Poland and Straltsova were also named Waterski Discipline Athletes of the Year, underscoring their supremacy within the sport’s flagship category.
In a season defined by rising performances and relentless competition, Poland and Straltsova stood apart—not just for what they won, but for how completely they controlled 2025. The IWWF’s recognition merely formalized what the results had already made clear: they remain the mark to beat.
Water skiing in 2025 was a year of rising performances and expanding possibility. Records fell, ceilings collapsed, and moments that once felt unimaginable became routine. From teenagers rewriting history to veterans redefining resilience, the season delivered a relentless stream of storylines that pushed the sport forward while constantly testing its limits. It was a year where brilliance arrived in waves, controversies lingered, and the level required to win climbed higher with every event.
Across the Waterski Pro Tour, WWS Overall Tour, IWWF world championships at every level, and legacy stages like Moomba and the U.S. Masters, the sport unfolded through breakthroughs, confrontations, and generational shifts. New rivalries ignited. Established orders were challenged. And in disciplines once thought to have plateaued, sudden surges forced a rethink of what elite performance truly means.
As we count down the most memorable moments of the 2025 season, this list captures more than just victories and records. It reflects a sport in full acceleration—deeper, bolder, and more competitive than ever—and the athletes who defined it when expectations were highest and the spotlight brightest.
There’s always a particular optimism baked into the first major tournament of the season. The days grow longer, boats are dewinterized, and spring fever sets in. In recent years, that role has belonged to Moomba. But in 2025, the season’s opening statement came a week earlier—and from an unexpected corner of the calendar.
The University World Championships returned for the first time since 2016, staged in Auckland’s Orakei Basin, salt water shimmering in the heart of the city. The “Collegiate Worlds” brought together student-athletes from five continents, blending future stars, established pros, and wide-eyed newcomers thrilled to wear national colors. There were personal bests everywhere. There was Aaliyah Yoong Hannifah making history. And then there was Austria.
What the four Austrians pulled off bordered on absurd.
Against a Team USA contingent 14 strong—including a stacked six-skier A-team—Austria arrived with just four athletes. One was a single-event skier. Another, their strongest overall threat, withdrew at the last minute. There were no alternates. No safety nets. In tricks and jump, one misstep would have ended everything.
Instead, every skier delivered.
Luca Rauchenwald won jump outright. Lili Steiner claimed silver in jump and overall. Nikolaus Attensam posted the top men’s slalom score of prelims, maximizing team points. And Dominic Kuhn’s bronze in tricks—behind a field loaded with world champions—proved decisive.
In the 80-year history of IWWF world championships, only six nations had ever finished ahead of the United States. Only five had ever won a team title.
Make it six.
Undermanned, unflinching, and utterly fearless, Austria didn’t just win Auckland—they announced themselves. And in doing so, gave the 2025 season its first unforgettable moment.
There was a time when 13,000 points in men’s trick skiing felt like a myth. A ceiling. A number whispered with admiration, then dismissed with realism.
Enter Jake Abelson.
On a hot June weekend at Ski Fluid in central Florida, the 17-year-old American became the first skier in history to cross the barrier, posting 13,020 points. When the IWWF ratified the score, it didn’t just crown a new world record holder—it confirmed that trick skiing had entered a new era.
The milestone was years in the making. For nearly two decades, progress at the elite end of men’s tricks had been incremental, almost stagnant. Then came a surge. Patricio Font reignited the discipline in 2022. Matias Gonzalez raised the ceiling with relentless speed and precision. Suddenly, 12,000-point runs weren’t exceptional—they were the price of admission. In 2025, every men’s professional trick event was won with a score north of 12K.
The race to 13K was on.
Abelson got there first—but only just. Gonzalez and Font were right behind, pushing from different angles: Font with ruthless hand-pass efficiency, Gonzalez with audacious toe speed. And while Abelson claimed the milestone, the season’s most compelling moment came later.
At the World Championships in Recetto, with titles—not records—on the line, Gonzalez edged Abelson by ten points. Ten. The smallest possible margin in trick skiing. A single freeze-frame separating gold from silver.
In that sense, 13,000 wasn’t the finish line. It was proof of how narrow the margins have become.
For decades, 10.25 meters—41 off—stood as men’s slalom’s final frontier. A pass reserved for the extraordinary, spoken about in reverent tones. By the time the sun set on the 2025 Travers Grand Prix, it felt like something else entirely: the new baseline.
At Sunset Lakes in Groveland, four different skiers ran 41 off a combined seven times, obliterating the previous record of four, set just two years earlier. It wasn’t an isolated spike, either. Across the back half of the season—World Championships, MasterCraft Pro, and now Travers—men’s titles have increasingly been decided at 9.75 meters (43 off). The ceiling didn’t just crack in 2025. It caved in.
Nate Smith and Charlie Ross had led the charge, but at the Grand Prix they were joined by Jonathan Travers and Freddie Winter, all four pushing through 41 and into rarified air. Winter went furthest when it mattered most, advancing to 43 and sealing both the event win and his first-ever Waterski Pro Tour season championship.
“This is the first season title I’ve ever won,” Winter said, emotion spilling over. “A year and a half ago I had a really terrible time, I hurt myself, and I worked really hard to come back… This one’s for everyone who helped me come back.”
The women matched the drama stride for stride. Regina Jaquess, Jaimee Bull, and Whitney McClintock Rini produced the first three-way tie at 41 off in waterski history, forcing a cold-start runoff at 10.75 meters. Jaquess prevailed on the water, but Bull walked away with the bigger prize—her fifth consecutive Pro Tour season title.
Seven 41s. Four skiers into 43. One unmistakable message: the sport’s limits are shifting, and fast.
Unfortunately, one of the most memorable moments of the 2025 season earned its place in this countdown for all the wrong reasons. The Under-21 World Championships in Calgary were meant to spotlight the sport’s next generation. Instead, they became a reminder that, at times, judging—not skiing—can define a championship.
Held at Predator Bay, the U21 Worlds delivered much of what the event promises: breakout performances, record scores, and glimpses of future world champions. But during the women’s trick final, the focus shifted abruptly from athletic brilliance to adjudication.
When Colombia’s Daniela Verswyvel had her reverse mobe—an 800-point, title-swinging trick—ruled no-credit, the reaction was immediate and explosive. Live chats lit up. Elite skiers voiced disbelief. Formal protests were filed in the aftermath by Colombia, Canada, and the United States. The call stood, awarding gold to Canada’s Hannah Stopnicki and leaving Verswyvel heartbroken.
To her credit, Stopnicki—a deserving champion who could easily have won the title without controversy on another day—handled the moment with grace, embracing Verswyvel in a tearful scene that captured both the beauty and brutality of elite sport. “I know the judges are looking at everything extra carefully,” Stopnicki said afterward. “I was just trying to be as clean as I could be.”
The controversy didn’t end with the medals. The IWWF World Waterski Council launched a formal review, with Chief Judge Felipe Leal concluding—supported by EyeTrick data—that the panel was “very strict but consistent.” The issue, he stressed, was an unusually high number of non-credit calls that left many athletes dissatisfied.
The fallout reached beyond Calgary. Ahead of the Open Worlds in Italy, the Council committed to judge clinics aimed at improving consistency and restoring trust.
In a week meant to celebrate the future, Calgary instead exposed a fault line the sport can’t ignore. Trick judging, for all its tools and systems, remains far less objective than we’d like to believe.
The 64th Moomba Masters on Melbourne’s Yarra River wasn’t just another stop on the pro circuit—it was the crucible in which a new generation of champions was forged. Across the festival’s six professional events, four were won by first-time champions, setting the stage for breakthrough seasons.
In men’s tricks, 17-year-old Jake Abelson claimed his first professional victory, topping the highest-scoring podium in history. Moomba proved the launchpad for a meteoric season: Abelson went on to win the three largest prize-purse events, break the 13,000-point mark, and finish 2025 as the sport’s most dominant trick skier, despite a narrow World Championships defeat.
Slalom followed a similar trajectory. Nineteen-year-old Charlie Ross secured his first pro title with veteran composure, then rode that momentum to two pro wins, seven top-five finishes, U21 World Championships gold, and a silver at the Open Worlds—emerging as a genuine threat to Nate Smith and Freddie Winter for years to come.
The jump event crowned Joel Poland, returning from his Australian ban, as Moomba champion for the first time, launching an undefeated six-win season in men’s jump—a feat not achieved by any man since Freddy Krueger in 2006. Brittany Greenwood Wharton also claimed her debut professional victory, kicking off a season that included five podiums and a runner-up finish at the World Championships.
By the time the fireworks lit up Monday night’s jump finals, Moomba 2025 had delivered more than victories. Record-breaking performances, first-time champions, and a rising crop of elite athletes signaled a shift in the sport’s competitive landscape, reaffirming why the Moomba Masters remains water skiing’s ultimate proving ground.
The 2025 World Championships delivered countless historic moments, but perhaps none more electrifying than the men’s slalom final in Recetto—a showdown that redefined what elite slalom looks like.
When Nate Smith, one of the most reliable closers in water skiing history, posted one at 9.75m (43 off) skiing fourth off the dock, it seemed the title was settled. But over an hour later, 20-year-old Charlie Ross left the dock and matched him—forcing a sudden-death runoff for the world championship. For the first time in World Championships history, two skiers had to attempt 10.25m (41 off) cold, with gold on the line.
It was a generational collision. Smith, the standard-bearer of modern slalom. Ross, the breakout force of the year. Smith prevailed in the runoff, but the result felt secondary to the message: the gap had closed.
“I’ve never even tried 41 off the dock in practice,” Smith admitted afterward. “A lot goes through your head… but yeah, I’m pretty happy.”
The drama didn’t end in Italy. Weeks later, at the very next pro slalom event, Ross and Smith found themselves locked together again—tied once more at 43 off. Another runoff. Another razor-thin separation. Different venue, same script.
Back-to-back ties at the hardest line length in the sport, across two of the biggest stages of the season, felt less like coincidence and more like a turning point. Smith still claimed the crown, but Ross had firmly announced himself as his equal.
In a season defined by record-breaking depth and shrinking margins, no moment captured water skiing’s new reality quite like this one: the champion tested, the challenger confirmed, and a rivalry forged buoy by buoy at 43 off.
If 2025 has a defining rivalry, it has to be Erika Lang versus Neilly Ross. Lang started the season seemingly untouchable, going undefeated across Moomba, Swiss Pro Tricks, and the Masters, reclaiming the world record from Ross, and setting the tone for a dominant year.
Ross, meanwhile, looked out of sorts early on, traveling the globe and honing her craft in a grueling schedule that included competing in the men’s field in Monaco. It took six pro events, but in Portugal she finally broke through, clinching her first win of the season and nearly matching world record form—a statement that she was back.
The rivalry erupted at Botaski. Lang set a pending world record in the prelims, only for Ross to tie the current record in the finals, forcing Lang to chase a second world record just to win. Every trick, every frame, every point counted. Ross’ victory marked her first major triumph in three years and signaled a shift: Lang’s dominance was no longer assured.
The drama carried into the World Championships in Recetto, where both women arrived in red-hot form. Once again, victory was decided by a hair’s breadth, with Ross’ late-season momentum peaking at the perfect moment. Two athletes, pushing the limits of skill and precision, raised the standard for women’s trick skiing, making every pass a spectacle and every point a headline.
Lang remains one of the most successful women in the modern era, but Ross has proven she can match, and even surpass, the best—turning a personal comeback into one of the sport’s most thrilling storylines and taking women’s trick skiing to an entirely new level.
The men’s overall battle at the 2025 World Championships was the closest since 2009’s legendary three-way standoff, pitting Canada’s Dorien Llewellyn against defending champion Louis Duplan-Fribourg in a clash of precision, power, and pedigree.
The tournament began with a shock: Joel Poland, the sport’s most consistent tricker and early favorite, stumbled in the prelims. One front flip gone awry ended his flawless streak. Poland’s misstep became arguably the defining moment of the Worlds, a reminder that even the greatest can falter on the biggest stage.
From there, the men’s overall title came down to a hair. Duplan-Fribourg dominated tricks, setting the top score, and matched his personal best in slalom—but was penalized after a video gate review nullified his 10.75m pass, leaving him just 13 points behind Llewellyn. Every move counted.
Llewellyn, aiming to secure the title in the trick final, miscued on a landing and sank in disbelief, keeping the championship undecided. It all came down to jump. Duplan-Fribourg needed just 70 centimeters more to snatch the crown but came up short. In a performance echoing his 2021 duel with Joel Poland, Llewellyn soared 69.9 meters (229 feet), his best jump in years.
With that leap, Dorien Llewellyn followed in his father’s footsteps, claiming the World Overall title and cementing his place among water skiing royalty.
The 2025 World Championships proved that in overall competition, margins are measured in centimeters—and legends are defined by their ability to seize—or survive—the smallest of moments.
If Hollywood scripted a comeback, could it have been as dramatic as Freddie Winter’s at the 2025 U.S. Masters? Less than a year after shattering his femur in Monaco and missing most of 2024, the two-time world slalom champion returned to Robin Lake with history, expectations, and personal demons stacked against him. Winter’s fraught relationship with the Masters added another layer: banned in 2023 after an emotionally charged judging dispute, he had unfinished business on the event’s storied waters.
When the dust settled on Saturday’s brutal semifinals, the veterans were gone, leaving Winter as one of the few household names in the final. Last off the dock, chasing a lead set by Nate Smith, he hurled himself outside of three ball with trademark fearlessness. When the spray settled, Winter had done it—his first professional victory since his injury, his third Masters title, and arguably the most satisfying of his career. “Probably the most emotional moment of my life,” he said afterward. “So much self-doubt and fear I wouldn’t get back here over the last 10 months and 29 days.”
The Masters wasn’t just a singular triumph. It set the tone for the rest of Winter’s season: a string of consistent performances that saw him claim the Waterski Pro Tour title, rack up four pro victories (tying Nate Smith), and lead the year-end podium count. Though perhaps not fully back at 100 percent, Winter had reclaimed his place among the sport’s elite, proving that even after a potentially career ending injury, he could still define the men’s slalom narrative.
At Robin Lake, Freddie Winter reminded the water skiing world: the best stories aren’t just about victories—they’re about the journey to get there.
Across the sport, each new year seems to push performances to new and unprecedented heights. At many events, it has become commonplace for skiers to challenge—or even break—world records to clinch victory. It is, by almost any measure, a remarkable era to be a water ski fan.
One discipline, however, has largely resisted that trend. Jumping, with fewer events and shrinking opportunities, has seen its depth thin and top-end performances plateau. The concerning reality is that jump distances have not meaningfully improved this century and, by several metrics, have begun to decline.
All of which made what unfolded in Italy at this year’s World Championships all the more remarkable.
The tone was set in the opening days. Brandon Schipper arrived off a long-haul flight, skipped familiarization, and promptly unleashed the biggest jumps of his career. He wasn’t alone. Across the early rounds, season-bests and lifetime bests fell like dominoes. By week’s end, the cut to make the men’s jump final was the highest in World Championships history.
The finals delivered the crescendo. On the women’s side, personal bests stacked quickly—Maise Jacobsen and Aaliyah Yoong Hannifah both breaking 50 meters for the first time, with the entire top five clearing 170 feet. Brittany Greenwood Wharton, capping a career-best season, produced her longest jump in years to set the target. Hanna Straltsova, unflappable as ever, needed just two jumps to defend her title and complete another golden double.
Then came the men’s final—chaos, courage, and generational turnover wrapped into one shoreline spectacle. Eighteen-year-old Tim Wild, fresh off his first-ever 60-meter jump days earlier, flew 68.1m to announce himself on the sport’s biggest stage. Eight men cracked 220 feet. Schipper, giddy after another personal best, tapped home early, almost disbelieving what he’d just unleashed.
But the crown belonged to Joel Poland. His opening leap—72.1m, a personal best and new European record—froze the crowd. He passed his remaining jumps, gambling it would hold. It did. Ryan Dodd chased, cleared 70, and fell just short. With that, a three-decade lineage of North American jump dominance quietly ended.
In a discipline that had seemed stuck in neutral, Recetto felt like liftoff. Against every recent trend, jump delivered depth, drama, and distances that forced a recalibration of what was possible. Perhaps there is new life in water ski jumping after all.
Honorable Mentions
Aaliyah Yoong Hannifah’s triple-gold performance at the University World Championships, the first world titles ever won by an Asian competitor.
Tim Wild’s historic clean sweep at the Junior Masters—the first by a male skier in the event’s history.
Hanna Straltsova breaking the longest-standing record in the sport, by less than a third of an overall point.
Charlie Ross running 10.25m (41 off) at two different tournaments on the same day, breaking Will Asher’s 22-year-old collegiate record and tying for the lead at a professional event in the process.
Joel Poland setting yet another world record in professional competition to clinch the WWS Overall Tour season title.
MULWALA, Aus. – The 2025 IWWF World Disabled Waterski Championships wrapped this weekend at Max Kirwan Ski Park in Mulwala, Australia, capping three days of standout performances, tight battles, and an impressive nine pending world records across slalom, tricks, and jump.
Team USA left with the biggest haul of titles, sweeping the overall categories. Jana Shelfer claimed the Women’s Overall crown, while Connor Poggetto—who also posted a pending world record in jump at 28.5 meters—secured Men’s Overall. The Americans also topped the Team Overall, ahead of host nation Australia and Canada in third.
Pending World Records
Slalom
Eira Dalzell (AUS), A2 W – 4.00 buoys @ 55 kph / 18.25 m
Jayden Jobe (AUS), A/L1 M – 4.50 buoys @ 49 kph / 18.25 m
Samantha-Jane Longmore (AUS), MP1 W – 2.00 buoys @ 49 kph / 18.25 m (inner course)
Tricks
Abigayle Dunn (USA), MP3 W – 1,560 points
Jayner Shelfer (USA), MP2 F – 1,340 points
Noah Smith (USA), MP1 M – 920 points
Richard West (AUS), A/L1 M – 200 points
Jason Sleep (AUS), MP4 M – 1,600 points
Jump
Connor Poggetto (USA), MP5 – 28.5 meters
A Milestone Event at Mulwala
The Championships, hosted by the Mulwala Waterski Club, marked the final IWWF titled championship of Nautique’s 10-year partnership before Malibu Boats assumes title-sponsor duties in 2026.
Mulwala continues to cement itself as a global waterski hub. This was the second of three IWWF-sanctioned events awarded to the site under a multi-event agreement, with Mulwala set to host the 2027 IWWF Open World Championships—the first time the Open Worlds will be held in Australia since 1965.
For the first time in decades, tournament jump measurement is getting a genuine technological rethink. The World Waterski Council has officially approved SplashEye Fly—a single-drone system that could replace the maze of fixed cameras, cables, scaffolding, and setup hours traditionally required to measure jumps at elite events.
It’s the latest chapter in an evolution that has spanned generations. Jump measurement moved from meter stations on shore, to fixed-camera grid systems, to today—a drone hovering 210 feet above the landing zone. The tools have changed, but the mission hasn’t: find the truth in a plume of spray.
The Council’s approval, confirmed at its October 27 meeting, came after months of testing against existing systems. The results were excellent: SplashEye Fly consistently measured within 10 centimeters of the current gold-standard setups, held up over full-day tournament schedules, and delivered a cleaner overhead view that eased the challenge of judging splash-point contact.
The system’s simplicity is its sell. Instead of building a camera network across the lake, officials place two large printed ground-target banners on shore. The drone locks onto those fixed points and recalibrates after every jump, requiring no GPS, internet connection, or mid-jump piloting. Once airborne, it flies a set pattern, returns for battery swaps, and resumes with a few taps. The only real limitation is distance: the shoreline must sit within about 160 feet of the ramp so the drone can see both targets—a range SplashEye hopes future drone improvements will expand.
For founder Donal Connolly—who has spent more than 30 years building tournament software—the approval marks a turning point. “SplashEyeFly is a game-changer,” he said. “Most of the cost and time of installing a traditional jump measurement system comes from the camera infrastructure. Now you can arrive on a new site and be measuring jumps within minutes.”
Cheaper setup means more flexibility—and potentially more jump events. Remote sites, fresh ramp locations, and clubs without deep resources suddenly become viable hosts. As Connolly put it: “This will open up jump tournaments to new sites at an affordable price point.”
SplashEye is also expanding beyond jump. Recorder HD, Gates HD, and Trick Timer HD—new high-definition tools for slalom and tricks—extend the company’s modernized suite across all three disciplines.
With its inclusion in the 2026 Rulebook, SplashEye Fly becomes the sport’s newest approved jump-measurement system—and the first to take the job to the sky. For tournament skiing, the overhead era just arrived.
Within all the excitement of Nautique’s recent launch of the Water Ski World Series, one of the most consequential changes slipped through almost unnoticed. The new Series isn’t just for the pros—embedded within it are junior and senior competitions, and a quiet but unmistakable message from Nautique: for Correct Craft, the future of the sport is under-21.
Junior competition has been part of water skiing since the sport started categorizing itself. In the United States, the Jr. Boys division debuted at the fourth National Championships in 1946, giving young talent a structured path upward. Hall of Famer Dick Pope Jr. won Jr. Boys overall at 16 in 1947, then jumped straight to the men’s ranks and immediately began piling up national and world titles. Internationally, Europe launched its under-17 Championships in 1964, and the Under-17 Worlds followed in 1986.
For eight decades, under-17 has been synonymous with “junior”—the proving ground where future superstars were minted.
Then Nautique quietly took a sledgehammer to it.
Hidden near the bottom of their Series announcement was the line that changed everything: the Junior Masters would no longer be junior. Under-21 would replace it entirely. And it wasn’t a one-off. Moomba is doing the same in 2026, adding under-21 alongside the pros and the under-17s. The three other World Series stops will follow suit. With a single keystroke, a whole generation was reassigned.
Nautique framed the shift as modernization—a cleaner system, a clearer pathway. But inside the sport, the reaction has been anything but unanimous. For many coaches and families, the change feels less like progress and more like erasing a pillar the sport was built on.
Corey Vaughn is one of them.
“Under-17 skiers are true juniors and can be seen as the future of the sport,” shared Vaughn, a career coach of over 10 years. “By the age of 20–21, some of the top talent has ‘arrived’ and there is too much potential overlap.”
Reflecting on his own pupils, he added that opportunities like the Junior Masters were “empowering experiences at a perfect time of life. Very motivating. I’m sorry to see that change.”
So why make the change?
We asked Nautique for comment. They didn’t respond. Their FAQ stayed polished and corporate, leaning on phrases like “greater access” and “modernization.” The most substantive line was their aim to give juniors “additional time and experience before transitioning to the pro divisions.”
Which points to a deeper tension: nobody agrees on when a young skier should actually turn pro.
Take Tim Wild. At 18, he might already be one of the best overall skiers in the world. In 2025 he swept the Junior Masters, won the under-21 Worlds, and took a podium at the open Worlds—and yet he’s entered only a single pro event in his life, a small backyard trick event. On paper he’s a world-class pro. In practice he’s an overqualified junior. And that makes sense. Juniors give him reps. They give him confidence. They give him hardware.
This is common among Matt Rini’s protégés. Joel Poland didn’t debut as a pro until 20, choosing to dominate juniors until he felt ready to step into a field of grown men. Rini—a Nautique insider—was almost certainly influential in pushing the junior age higher.
But contrast Wild with Jake Abelson. Same age, same generation, completely different trajectory. Abelson earned his first pro podium at 12 and has spent years terrorizing the junior ranks while poaching wins from adults. He’s proof that success is possible while keeping a foot in both worlds.
Water skiing is one of the few sports where you can win a junior title in the morning and beat the pros by dinner. It makes for great stories. It also makes the definition of “pro” feel slightly absurd.
“In broad terms, I really wish we had a stronger boundary between professional and amateur skiing,” Vaughn added. “I’m amazed by the talent of these kids, but I don’t think the likes of Jake Abelson and Charlie Ross should get their chance at winning open—where they clearly belong—and then go clean house in the amateur ranks. You wouldn’t let a 20-year-old drafted into the NBA also play college ball.”
Today, athletes like Abelson can hop divisions freely. Governing bodies, whose marquee events are amateur, have every incentive to keep things blurry.
That freedom is beautiful. But it’s also chaos.
So Nautique responded to the chaos with structure: create a middle zone. Build a bridge for the 18–21-year-old phase, the years when the sport tends to lose more athletes than it develops. Under-21 isn’t a new format—Europe has run Championships since 1990, the PanAm Games debuted it in 1996, and the IWWF launched under-21 Worlds in 2003. America is the outlier. This move brings the sport’s major events in line with a global trend.
A strong under-21 circuit could give young adult skiers something they’ve never truly had: meaningful pressure without inevitable defeat.
But every structural change creates winners and losers.
We asked Matteo Luzzeri—who has coached many of Europe’s top juniors—whether a stronger under-21 focus helps the sport.
“I don’t know,” he said after some thought. “Given the high level of youth skiers—Mati, Jake, Tim, Charlie, Lucas, Axel, Maise, Christhiana—the opposite argument could be made: Under-17 is more necessary now than it used to be.”
This is the paradox of governance: every attempt to help one group seems to hurt another.
Men’s tricks might not need an amateur under-21 division when half the pro podiums are filled by teenagers who can’t yet vote. But in slalom and jump? Different story. Outside of men’s tricks, only Charlie Ross won a pro event this year as an under-21, and only four under-21 athletes made a podium at all. For most young skiers, the pro ranks are a long stretch of non-finals, non-money, and non-momentum. A purgatory measured by rope lengths.
So maybe Nautique is right. Maybe this is the way to build the next generation of stars: give them battles they can win now, not scars they’ll carry later.
But it’s also possible the line between amateur and pro gets even fuzzier. That under-17 athletes lose the stage they once dreamed about. That the next breakout skier arrives later—and to a smaller spotlight.
The thing about format changes is that the impact doesn’t show up immediately. You feel it in three years, or five. When the under-21 podiums are deep—or empty. When pro fields get tougher—or thinner. When a 16-year-old who should’ve skied Robin Lake never gets the chance.
This is the part nobody can model.
Nautique has placed its bet on a vision of the future: a broader bridge, a longer runway, a gentler ascent. The logic is easy enough to understand. The consequences are not.
Change in water skiing rarely arrives with fireworks. It shows up in a rulebook tweak, an age cutoff, a field list. A small shift in gravity.
And suddenly, the next generation stands somewhere slightly different than we expected.
Welcome to the water ski multiverse. We now live in a sport where everything is happening everywhere, all at once.
Many will ask whether a tiny, fractured niche sport really needed a third professional tour. Whether further splitting an already bloated and incoherent global calendar is remotely helpful. Whether everyone couldn’t just sit down, act like adults, and pull in the same direction for once.
But like it or not, the future is here. And for many pro skiers, it’s spelled N-A-U-T-I-Q-U-E.
For years, Nautique has been the lifeblood of elite skiing. They held the IWWF towboat contract for a decade—pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the federation. They kept the sport’s two crown jewels, the Moomba Masters and the U.S. Masters, alive through recessions, pandemics, and every imaginable governance meltdown. They’ve backed more athletes, more consistently, and more generously than anyone else.
And now, with their World Series of Water Skiing, they are injecting more money into professional skiing than all of the events on the Waterski Pro Tour and the WWS Overall Tour combined. It is the single largest investment in pro skiing in over twenty years.
Some in the sport cheered. Others felt the move like a bottle thrown across a quiet bar.
Because this is happening in a sport already stretched to breaking point. A sport where infighting and turf battles drain whatever oxygen remained. A sport that can’t agree on what its professional product is—let alone how to sell it.
The truth is that pro events have been propped up by private pockets, passion projects, and a politely disguised wealth-redistribution scheme in which the entry fees of lower-ranked skiers become prize money for the best. Everyone knows this. Everyone pretends not to.
In 2025, only ten skiers earned enough prize money to rise above the U.S. food-stamp line. Only five beat a full-time minimum-wage worker in Florida. That’s the economic reality behind the illusion of professionalism.
The Waterski Pro Tour was supposed to fix that. When it launched in 2021, it felt like a correction years overdue: athlete-led, narrative-driven, and structured enough to make sense of a notoriously incoherent landscape. For a moment, it worked. A wave of new events emerged. Those events gained legitimacy simply by being part of something bigger. Fans had a story to follow. Athletes had a season to chase.
But momentum disguised rot. The number of events rose, but prize money didn’t. More events meant less industry engagement, as limited marketing budgets were stretched thin. More weekends meant athletes couldn’t keep up. If you can’t make a living skiing—and you can’t—you need a day job. If you need a day job, you can’t chase tournaments across continents.
What emerged was a fractured field where some of the sport’s biggest names—Nate Smith, Regina Jaquess, Erika Lang—competed sparingly, their absences eroding the Pro Tour’s ability to crown a meaningful champion.
The Pro Tour needed substance, sponsors, and structure. What it had was a veneer: a brand lacquered over twenty-odd independent events, no real control over any of them, and no unified commercial product to sell.
Nautique is a company built on consolidation and control. It was never sold on the Pro Tour. They declined to include their flagship events from the outset and slowly leaned on the other events they sponsored to pull out one by one.
And so the World Series arrived. Without the IWWF towboat contract, Nautique needed a new platform to showcase their product—and suddenly had the budget to build it.
If the launch feels like a declaration of war, maybe it is. But history says progress rarely arrives without stepping on someone’s toes. In 1984, the Coors Light Water Ski Tour was born into a similarly scattered landscape. Over the prior decade, volunteers had pieced together a loose constellation of pro events across the United States. Then MasterCraft’s CEO launched an organized, centralized Tour. The American Water Ski Association fought it. They even tried to create a rival Tour in response. Some existing events joined the new Tour; others stayed outside and slowly faded.
We speak about that era with reverence now, but it was never universally adored. Long-running events went bankrupt under its competitive shadow. The Masters was dragged into professionalism kicking and screaming. Governing bodies resented losing control. And twice in the 1990s, athletes built rival tours out of frustration.
Yet through that conflict, skiing soared. The bull-in-a-china-shop approach taken by Rob Shirley and his successors put the sport on the map.
The parallels to Nautique’s move are almost uncomfortable. A single manufacturer launching a well-funded circuit. Independent events overshadowed. A governing body uneasy about losing control. A sport caught between centralization and chaos.
The significance of Nautique’s new tour isn’t the number of events. It’s the caliber. Five stops with genuinely deep prize pools and the full weight of Nautique’s athlete roster behind them will dominate the season. These will be the strongest fields, the highest stakes, the tournaments with consequences. That’s a new center of mass in a small universe. The kind of gravity that rewrites every orbit.
And for the Waterski Pro Tour, it means being nudged toward the cold edge of the map. Signs of strain have already surfaced: burnout among leadership, stalled content, a shrinking calendar. A schedule that risks becoming a regional slalom series, not a global showcase. Losing the sport’s most important events doesn’t kill the Pro Tour, but it guts its claim to legitimacy.
None of this means Nautique’s series is a revolution. Four of its five events already existed and were already among the sport’s highest-purse stops. The real change is the branding, the consolidation, and the clarity of intent. Nautique has given a name—and a narrative spine—to the shadow circuit they’ve been running for half a decade.
The danger isn’t Nautique doing this. It’s the sport doing nothing else.
Because adding more events with prize purses that barely cover travel isn’t a strategy. It’s noise. Nautique wants fewer, bigger, richer. Quality over quantity.
Well, that’s not exactly true either. Nautique’s goal is simple: sell boats. They believe the best path to that is a closed circuit they control—one built around their pros, aspirational juniors, and even a revived Big Dawg series.
Time will tell how long the sport can survive with three competing tours. Whether the Waterski Pro Tour can stage a comeback. Whether Nautique’s World Series can capture fans’ imagination. Where the WWS Overall Tour fits in any of this.
But this is the part where someone usually promises that competition breeds innovation, that conflict is healthy, that chaos is just the prelude to clarity. Maybe. But it’s just as possible we’re watching the sport split into its separate realities for good—each with its own logic, its own loyalties, its own gravitational pull.
Nautique has drawn its line. The Pro Tour is wobbling on its axis. The rest of the sport is left choosing which version of the future it wants to believe in.
That’s the multiverse we live in now. And like any multiverse, only one timeline survives.
Independent perspectives on tournament water skiing
