When the conversation turns to innovation in modern trick skiing, it almost always starts with Joel Poland. The multitalented Brit has made “super flips” part of the sport’s everyday vocabulary, turning his signature super-mobe-five into a tournament staple.
But there’s another name worth saying—one rising fast.
Seventeen-year-old Axel Garcia of France has been quietly building a résumé that demands attention. Third at last year’s Under-17 Worlds behind Mati Gonzalez and Jake Abelson. Multiple-time European champion. Top seed into the finals at the recently concluded Under-21 World Championships.
And above all, he’s developed a reputation for one thing: launching himself into frontflips with the kind of style and ease that makes fellow skiers double-take.
Among elite trick skiers, Garcia has been dubbed by some as the “King of the Half Jack.” The half jack—named after American skier Kevin Jack—is a frontflip variation where the skier edges into the wake from an inverted back position before throwing the flip. It’s a close cousin to the wakeboard “tantrum” and has quietly become one of the most common moves in top-level runs. These days, a mobe–reverse–half jack combo is almost as standard as a side slide.
Some, like world record holder Jake Abelson, still favor the more orthodox BFF (frontflip from a regular back position), but that’s becoming rare. The half jack’s speed, consistency, and smooth transition make it the go-to choice.
Garcia hasn’t just mastered it—he’s reinvented it. In 2023, he submitted a clip of himself landing a reverse FFLF, which the IWWF approved as a brand-new trick.
Recently, he posted an Instagram video that made waves: both regular and reverse FFLFs, plus both regular and reverse FFLBBs (frontflip 360s), all starting from the inverted back like a half jack. The reverse FFLBB isn’t even in the rulebook yet—but if Garcia submits it, he could add another flip to the official trick list.
Top names took notice. Pato Font, Mati Gonzalez, and Neilly Ross all jumped into the comments with praise.
Take backflips. Progressing from a basic backflip (BFL) to a backflip 540 (BFL5F) is worth 350 more points—about a 70% increase. But frontflips? A basic FFL is worth 800 points. The 540-degree version (FFL5F) gets just 150 more—less than a 20% bump.
Why? Because of an arbitrary 1,000-point ceiling. Years ago, the double backflip was set at that max value, despite no skier ever landing it. Since then, every trick has had to fit between 500 and that cap, squeezing the spread for higher-difficulty frontflips into a narrow range.
The result: Garcia gains little by throwing his most jaw-dropping tricks. At the Under-21 Worlds, he topped the prelim leaderboard with a run of safe, fast mobes, half-twists, and just two frontflips. Why risk a reverse half jack or a front-full for an extra 100–150 points when a 750-point half-twist is cleaner and safer?
He’s not alone. Abelson regularly posts outrageous frontflips online—no-wake FFLBs, front-fulls from a regular wrap—that never see a start dock in competition. Pato Font has ski-line and spin variations that would make even Cory Pickos jealous. Every top trick skier has an ace or two they leave at home on tournament day.
Part of the reason is difficulty: in trick skiing, you can’t afford an early fall. Speed and consistency win. That’s not a flaw—it’s part of what makes the sport thrilling. But with a different point spread, more of those “party tricks” could become prime-time tricks.
Axel Garcia is exactly the kind of skier trick skiing’s future needs—innovative, fearless, and stylish. His flips are already redefining what’s possible off a ski wake, even if the scorebook hasn’t caught up.
For now, his wildest moves might remain for Instagram. But if the sport wants its brightest stars to keep pushing the limits, it needs to make sure the risk is worth the reward.
Because Garcia may not just be the King of the Half Jack—he might be next in line for the whole trick skiing crown.
The World Championships have always delivered breathtaking competition, but perhaps no discipline captures the drama and intensity quite like overall. From dominant streaks and shocking upsets to clutch, career-defining performances, the race for overall gold has produced some of the most iconic moments in the sport’s history.
As we look ahead to the 2025 World Championships, anticipation is building—and so is nostalgia. We’re counting down the ten closest overall battles ever staged at the Worlds: contests where every buoy, every trick, and every inch mattered.
In this storied event, athletes compete across all three disciplines—slalom, tricks, and jump—with overall scores calculated based on how close they come to the best mark in each. The format rewards versatility and consistency, with the overall champion traditionally recognized as the best water skier in the world.
Join us as we relive some of the most thrilling overall showdowns in World Championship history.
Image: Yvon le Gall
10. Gothenburg, Sweden 1983
Contenders: Deena Brush (USA) vs. Ana Maria Carrasco (VEN)
The drama started before a single buoy was rounded. In a controversial decision, the U.S. Team left out the defending overall champion from 1981—Karin Roberge. Under the rules at the time, only officially selected team members could compete at the World Championships, and the U.S. used a Team Trials event two months prior to select its six-athlete roster. Roberge, having an off day in tricks, narrowly missed the cut.
Out of the preliminary rounds, two young challengers—21-year-old Deena Brush and 20-year-old Ana Maria Carrasco—emerged in a dead heat, with Brush holding a razor-thin 4-point advantage in overall.
In the slalom final, Brush edged ahead slightly, gaining another three-quarters of a buoy. The two would finish silver and bronze in the event. Then came tricks, where Carrasco—who had been trading the world record with the Soviet Union’s Natalia Rumjantseva over the past three years—delivered fireworks. In the final, she laid down a new world record of 7,970 points, putting over 2,000 points between herself and Brush. But in the combined-score format used for individual medals at the time, Carrasco still took silver behind Rumjantseva.
Carrasco’s performance vaulted her just ahead of Brush in the overall standings heading into jump—the weakest of Carrasco’s three events. She didn’t make the jump final and could only watch as Brush chased the title. The American, who would go on to become one of the greatest jumpers of all time, needed just two feet more than her prelim mark to claim gold. But it wasn’t to be. She missed the jump podium, and the title went to Carrasco.
Key Moment: Arguably, the U.S. Team Trials. On form, Karin Roberge was the best overall skier in the world at the time, and her scores from the previous World Championships would have comfortably secured the title.
Winning Margin: 28 points. Equivalent to two feet (70 centimeters) in jump.
Ana Maria Carrasco (2,641 points)
Deena Brush (2,613 points)
Camille Duvall (2,577 points)
Duvall pays an emotional tribute to his late father.
9. London, England 1987
Contenders: Sammy Duvall (USA) vs. Mick Neville (AUS)
It remains one of the most iconic moments in World Championship history—and arguably the most clutch performance waterskiing has ever seen.
Heading into the 1987 Worlds at Thorpe Park, Sammy Duvall had already cemented his legacy with three consecutive world overall titles. He was also one of the sport’s first true professionals—a dominant jumper, a fixture of the Coors Light Pro Tour, and a household name in the U.S. And by ’87, his appetite for amateur competition was waning. This would be his final World Championship appearance.
His chief rival, though lesser known to many today, was a generational talent. Mick Neville, the unpretentious Aussie, had evolved from a world-class tricker into perhaps the most complete skier of his time. To this day, Neville remains the only man to win professional titles in all three events during the modern era. Think of him as a 1980s Joel Poland—funny accent, quiet swagger, and an allegiance to the crown.
Neville, still burning from a narrow defeat to Duvall two years earlier, came out swinging. He shocked pundits by claiming bronze in slalom, outskiing Pro Tour staples like Kris LaPoint and Carl Roberge, even edging Michael Kjellander in a runoff. Duvall, meanwhile, narrowly missed the slalom final—leaving the door open.
In tricks, Neville was unshakable, scoring over 9,000 points in both rounds to claim silver behind Patrice Martin. With two events down, the Australian held a commanding lead in overall.
Duvall, as expected, had the edge in jump. His opening-round 57.4-meter leap led the field—but it wasn’t enough to erase Neville’s advantage, and he sat in third overall heading into the final round, trailing both Neville and Roberge.
What followed was chaos. The men’s jump final became a frenetic game of musical chairs, reshuffling the leaderboard with every skier. First, a 20-year-old Kreg Llewellyn launched three meters farther than in the prelims to bump Duvall off the overall podium. Then Martin posted a huge personal best to leap into second. Neville followed with a nearly two-meter improvement, vaulting into the lead. When Roberge failed to respond, Duvall stood on the dock—last man out—sitting in fifth place.
More than 10,000 spectators lined the banks of Thorpe Park. Tension was thick enough to cut with a ski fin. Security was even required on the dock after another competitor’s belligerent father got into an altercation with Duvall’s sister Camille. The atmosphere was electric.
Duvall’s first jump? A massive 59.1 meters—the farthest ever at a World Championships. It earned him the jump gold, but still left him half a meter shy of Neville in overall. Then came jump number two. And then, history.
On his final jump, everything clicked. You could hear it in the snap of his skis, see it in the compression before the ramp, and feel it in the silence that hung as he took flight. When he landed—200 feet downcourse—everyone knew. Sammy had done it. With one final, flawless leap, he ripped the overall title from Neville’s grasp and closed the curtain on an undefeated career at the World Championships.
Neville, once again the runner-up, walked away with three medals from London. His eight total podiums remain the most of any man never to win gold.
But this was Duvall’s swan song. And he exited the World Championship stage exactly as he had entered it—undefeated, unmatched, and unshakable when it mattered most.
Key Moment: Sometimes pictures speak louder than words.
Winning Margin: 24 points. Equivalent to two buoys in slalom.
Contenders: Kim De Macedo (CAN) vs. Natalia Rumjantseva (RUS)
The 1993 World Championships—the first ever held in Asia—are best remembered for the dramatic team battle between the U.S. and Canada, ultimately decided by a razor-thin margin. But quietly, on the brackish, tidal waters of Singapore, another race was unfolding: a down-to-the-wire overall showdown between a Russian veteran and an unheralded Canadian upstart.
Natalia Rumjantseva, already a three-time world trick champion, dominated the preliminary rounds and looked poised to claim her first overall title. With Karen Bowkett Neville and Deena Brush Mapple both retired, Rumjantseva’s closest challenge was expected to come from Canada’s Judy McClintock Messer—a perennial podium finisher in overall.
In the trick final, Messer closed the gap slightly as top-seeded Rumjantseva slipped to second behind Britt Larsen. But it wasn’t enough to seriously threaten the lead. Then came the jump final—where everything changed.
First off the dock was Olga Pavlova of Belarus, a complete unknown to western audiences. She stunned the field by leapfrogging Messer and moving into second overall. Messer responded with a clutch three-meter improvement of her own, reclaiming second—but still sat a meter and a half shy of Rumjantseva’s mark.
Enter Kim De Macedo.
Just 21 years old and added to Team Canada primarily for depth, the public lake skier from Vancouver Island delivered the jump of her life: 41.9 meters, the longest of the day. The performance vaulted her from a distant fourth into striking range of the title. Rumjantseva, skiing next, watched as the young Canadian came within an infinitesimal 0.7 overall points of overtaking her. As the computers whirred, the Russian veteran responded with a half-meter improvement—to put any doubts to bed.
Rumjantseva took the title. De Macedo settled for silver. But in a performance few saw coming, the Canadian walk-on very nearly rewrote the story.
Key Moment: De Macedo’s breakout jump, which earned her an unexpected gold in the event and nearly the overall title. It also proved decisive in Canada’s historic win in the team competition.
Winning Margin: 24 points. Equivalent to 60 centimeters, or two feet, in jump.
Natalia Rumjantseva (2,678 points)
Kim De Macedo (2,654 points)
Judy McClintock Messer (2,602 points)
The Battle of Bogotá
7. Bogotá, Colombia 1973
Contenders: Sylvia Maurial (FRA) vs. Lisa St. John (USA)
In the thin mountain air of Bogotá, the 13th World Water Ski Championships delivered one of the sport’s purest overall duels. Lisa St. John, the fresh-faced high school grad from Redding, California, faced off against France’s Sylvie Maurial, a seasoned veteran fresh off an Olympic gold medal in jump at the 1972 Games in Munich. The two women were virtually inseparable across all three events—trading leads, medals, and momentum in one of the closest overall contests in tournament history.
St. John struck first, edging Maurial by a single buoy in the slalom preliminary. Maurial responded in the final, running the only 14.25m (28-off) pass of the tournament to claim slalom gold. In tricks, St. John led Maurial by just 80 points in the prelim and extended that margin slightly to 130 in the final. On the jump ramp, Maurial struck back again, out-leaping St. John by just half a meter to take silver behind the USA’s Liz Allan Shetter.
When the dust settled and the points were tallied, St. John came out a hair ahead.
It was a heartbreaking near-miss for Maurial, and a career-defining victory for St. John. But tragically, the triumph in Bogotá would be her last major one. Ten days later, she suffered a back injury at the California Cup that effectively ended her run at the top. Her career had been a meteoric rise—from child prodigy to world champion—all before her 19th birthday.
Key Moment: The slalom preliminary, where St. John edged Maurial by a single buoy. Under the scoring rules of the time, only preliminary scores counted toward the overall race. Maurial’s final-round surge earned her slalom gold, but it came a round too late.
Winning Margin: 17 points. Equivalent to a single buoy in slalom.
Lisa St. John (2,534 points)
Sylvia Maurial (2,516 points)
Barbara Cleveland (2,149 points)
Image: Jaret Llewellyn
6. Calgary, Canada 2009
Contenders: Javier Julio (ARG) vs. Jaret Llewellyn (CAN) vs. Adam Sedlmajer (CZE)
In one of the most open overall fields in World Championships history, the 2009 edition in Calgary felt like a roll of the dice. At least five men had a legitimate shot at the title, and by the end of the prelims, three remained—one a grizzled legend, one a fresh-faced prodigy, and a come-from-behind victory for the ages.
Jimmy Siemers stormed out early with a strong trick score, chased closely by Belarusian teammates Herman Beliakou and Oleg Deviatovski. But the slalom event shuffled the deck. Both Adam Sedlmajer and Javier Julio ran midway through 10.75m (39.5 off), putting themselves a full pass ahead of most of the field and narrowly missing the slalom finals in a stacked eight-way runoff for the last two spots.
Then came jump. And with it, chaos.
Jaret Llewellyn, competing in front of a hometown crowd, launched the farthest leap of the prelims to vault himself into serious contention. Siemers and Beliakou misfired, effectively ending their campaigns. When the dust settled, Sedlmajer—a then-unknown 22-year-old from the Czech Republic—held a narrow overall lead over the 38-year-old Llewellyn heading into the finals.
Enter Javier Julio, the emotive Argentinian, skiing with nothing to lose.
First off the dock in tricks—in a final he had only just scraped into—Julio threw down more than 1,000 points over his prelim total, enough to move within striking distance of Sedlmajer and Llewellyn and put himself firmly in the conversation. Then in jump, again as one of the lowest seeds, he found two extra meters on his earlier score and took the overall lead outright.
From there, it was a waiting game. Sedlmajer couldn’t improve. And then came Llewellyn, last off the dock. He needed 70.3 meters to clinch overall gold. Coincidentally, that was the exact distance needed to steal the jump title from Freddy Krueger as well. The crowd held its breath.
But it wasn’t to be. Llewellyn’s best mark was 68.5 meters. A remarkable performance, but not quite enough. Julio, after three consecutive podium finishes earlier in the decade, had finally secured the one title that had always eluded him—claiming Argentina’s first world title.
In a curious twist, the 2009 World Championships were one of only a handful between 2007 and 2013 that used an overall scoring formula widely criticized for overweighting slalom. Under the system used for the previous five decades—or the one in place today—Llewellyn would have won comfortably. Instead, it was Julio who claimed gold: a deserving champion on the day, but one whose victory came in part thanks to a scoring system that has since been scrapped.
Key Moment: The men’s jump prelims were carnage—an outbreak of crashes ruled multiple skiers out of the finals. Had they advanced, Julio’s 200-foot leap likely wouldn’t have made the cut, leaving him out of the final—and out of the race.
Winning Margin: 15 points. Equivalent to a toe slide.
Javier Julio (2,773 points)
Adam Sedlmajer (2,758 points)
Jaret Llewellyn (2,739 points)
Image: WATERSKI Magazine
5. Toulouse, France 1985
Contenders: Sammy Duvall (USA) vs. Mick Neville (AUS) vs. Carl Roberge (USA)
The 1985 World Championships delivered a classic—a three-way standoff in men’s overall that mirrored the broader team competition, where Australia pushed the undefeated Americans closer than ever to surrendering their grip on the world title. And at the center of it all were three men, each with a distinct style and background: The brash confidence of Duvall, the imposing presence of Roberge, and the suave precision of Neville.
Duvall and Roberge were mainstays on the Coors Light Pro Tour, sharpening their slalom and jump in the crucible of professional competition. Neville, by contrast, was a throwback—a tricker first and foremost, still to this day the most decorated trick skier in Moomba Masters history. A relative unknown to international audiences, he arrived in Toulouse determined to prove he could match the pros at their own game.
Roberge struck first, claiming bronze in slalom behind Bob LaPoint and Andy Mapple, finishing two buoys clear of both Duvall and Neville. But Neville countered in tricks, scoring nearly 9,000 points to take bronze behind Patrice Martin and Cory Pickos, putting daylight between himself and the two Americans.
Heading into the jump final, Duvall had the edge. His prelim jump was over 10 feet farther than either rival—and he held a commanding lead in the overall. But the final was anything but predictable.
Neville, the bottom seed, stunned the crowd with a 54-meter leap—3.5 meters farther than his prelim score—to match Duvall’s earlier mark and snatch the lead. Then Roberge responded with a jump 10 feet farther than his qualifying mark, leapfrogging Duvall into second.
Suddenly, the two-time defending champion was sitting in third. His first two jumps didn’t move the needle. It came down to his final attempt. Duvall needed something special—and delivered. On his third and final jump, he unleashed the patented Duvall kick and soared past 184 feet, just enough to reclaim the lead and secure an unprecedented third consecutive World overall title.
Key Moment: Though overshadowed in the jump final by the aforementioned trio, a 21-year-old former trick specialist from France was in the silver medal position when Neville left the dock—perhaps a quiet foreshadowing of the decade of dominance to come.
Winning Margin: 11 points. Equivalent to one foot, or 30 centimeters, in jump.
Contenders: Aliaksandra Danisheuskaya (BLR) vs. Hanna Straltsova (BLR)
For a country that has quietly produced more elite overall skiers than any other in the past two decades, it was only fitting that the most dramatic battle of recent times came down to two Belarusians: Aliaksandra Danisheuskaya and Hanna Straltsova.
Danisheuskaya struck first, running deep into 11.25m (38 off) in slalom to take the early lead. But Straltsova punched back in jump, claiming a 2.6-meter (9-foot) advantage to finish the prelims with a commanding overall lead. When the dust settled on the elimination round, she held a 100-point lead over Canada’s Paige Rini in second, while Danisheuskaya sat nearly 200 points off the pace in third.
Then came tricks—and with it, a seismic shift.
Danisheuskaya had only just squeaked into the final, grabbing the last qualifying spot by just 20 points. But when the opportunity presented itself, she seized it. Upping her prelim score by nearly 1,000 points, she vaulted into the overall lead, narrowly ahead of Straltsova.
When Rini, Straltsova, and pre-event favorite Giannina Bonnemann all failed to improve in the final, it came down to jump.
Danisheuskaya, skiing from the middle of the pack, tacked on another 1.4 meters (5 feet) to her previous mark, extending her narrow lead. That left Straltsova—silver medalist in both overall and jump two years earlier—with one more chance. She needed 56.2 meters to claim gold.
She came heartbreakingly close. Her best jump, 55.5 meters (182 feet), was good enough for silver—for the fourth time across the 2019 and 2021 World Championships—but not quite enough to catch her teammate.
Danisheuskaya, who had not stood on the podium in any of the individual events, walked away with gold in the one that mattered most.
It would mark the final time either woman would represent Belarus. Four months later, the country was suspended from IWWF competition following its involvement in the invasion of Ukraine. Both Danisheuskaya and Straltsova would continue their careers under the U.S. flag—claiming medals, and in Straltsova’s case, dual golds—at the next World Championships.
Key Moment: Giannina Bonnemann, the world’s top-ranked overall skier entering the tournament, fell early on toes in both rounds of tricks. Had she scored anywhere near her best, she would have cruised to the title.
Winning Margin: 8 points. Only half a buoy in slalom.
Aliaksandra Danisheuskaya (2,574 points)
Hanna Straltsova (2,565 points)
Paige Rini (2,412 points)
Image: WATERSKI Magazine
3. West Palm Beach, United States 1989
Contenders: Patrice Martin (FRA) vs. Carl Roberge (USA)
In 1989, the World Championships returned to U.S. soil for the first time in 28 years, landing at Okeeheelee Park in West Palm Beach for what turned out to be a blockbuster event. The sport was arguably at its peak in American popularity—major sponsors like Pepsi and Coors Light were on board, and more than 15,000 spectators lined the banks for the final day of competition. The headline drama? A gripping men’s overall showdown between established star Carl Roberge and France’s relentless technician, Patrice Martin.
Roberge, 25, had long been the heir apparent—Sammy Duvall’s understudy, a three-time overall bronze medalist, and now the anchor of Team USA. He entered the event ranked number one in the world, with pro tour titles and a season championship already under his belt. Martin, meanwhile, had three world trick titles to his name and was steadily evolving into a true three-event threat. After flirting with the podium in both 1985 and 1987, the Frenchman arrived in Florida looking for more than tricks gold—he wanted the overall.
Roberge opened strong in slalom, his best event, matching Andy Mapple’s championship record of 3 @ 10.75m (39.5 off) to earn silver and establish a full-pass advantage over Martin. But Martin fired back in tricks with a tournament-record 10,780 in the prelims, more than offsetting Roberge’s edge. After the jump prelims, Roberge clung to a razor-thin lead overall—setting the stage for a winner-take-all final.
The jump event, Martin’s weakest, saw him go first. Le Petit Prince barely improved on his prelim mark, landing at 53.5 meters—just enough to inch into the lead and apply pressure. Roberge, one of the top jumpers in the world, needed just 56.7 meters (186 feet)—well short of his personal best and comfortably within his range.
But he never found it.
Three eerily similar jumps, each a little back on the ramp, left him stranded six points short. The crowd watched in stunned silence as the scoreboard confirmed the result: Martin, by the slimmest of margins.
Four years earlier in Toulouse, Martin had declared his intention to win the overall title. Now, on U.S. turf, he finally did—kicking off one of the greatest winning streaks in the history of the sport.
Key Moment: Trick judging at these championships was widely questioned—Cory Pickos called it “nearly incompetent,” and even medalists were surprised by their high scores. Would a stricter panel have swung the overall result the other way?
Winning Margin: 6 points. Less then a foot, a quarter meter, in jump.
Contenders: Jean-Marie Muller (FRA) vs. Bruno Zaccardi (ITA)
The VII World Water Ski Championship at Long Beach was a landmark event for the sport—both in spectacle and competition. It featured the most extensive television coverage water skiing had ever received, broadcast live to homes across the U.S., and drew thousands of spectators. The mile-and-a-quarter Marine Stadium, built for the 1932 Olympics, once again hosted a major international competition. Banners from 19 nations rippled in the breeze as ski parades, chorus lines, and a battery of television cameras surrounded an event marked by style, tension, and a shifting global balance of power.
Tournament skiing in 1961 bore little resemblance to today’s format. Men ran the slalom course at 60 kph (37.3 mph), ramp tricks were still common, and jumpers were judged not just on distance, but on style. In this hybrid of sport and performance, it was 18-year-old Italian Bruno Zaccardi who emerged victorious in the overall standings—though only just.
Zaccardi’s path to the title was a study in consistency. A middling slalom performance saw him qualify for the final but finish only seventh. But he bounced back in the trick and jump events, collecting bronze medals in both. Muller, the French standout, struck gold in tricks—France’s signature event even then—and matched Zaccardi closely in slalom, finishing just one buoy short. But the Italian’s advantage on the ramp proved decisive.
American hopes rested on defending champion Chuck Stearns, but an ankle injury sustained at the Nationals limited his impact. Though U.S. athletes won three of the eight gold medals and claimed the team title, Zaccardi’s triumph marked a turning point—the rise of Europe on the world stage. Coming off three consecutive European overall titles, his win in Long Beach confirmed his global credentials and hinted at a more competitive, international era ahead.
Key Moment: With a fierce cut and a forward-leaning air form, Zaccardi launched a personal best 42.6-meter (140-foot) leap that brought the crowd to its feet and sent his countrymen into hysterics before the distance was even announced. Though not the longest jump of the event—American Larry Penacho flew 45.7 meters—it was enough to secure Zaccardi’s historic overall win.
Winning Margin: 4 points—equivalent to a two-ski side-slide, something you would actually have seen at the ’61 Worlds.
Bruno Zaccardi (2,667 points)
Jean-Marie Muller (2,663 points)
A.J. Orsi, Jr. (2,547 points)
The tightest overall battle in World Championships history
1. Villach, Austria 1991
Contenders: Jaret Llewellyn (CAN) vs. Kreg Llewellyn (CAN) vs. Patrice Martin (FRA)
Patrice Martin entered the 1991 World Championships as the reigning overall champion, fresh off a dramatic victory over Carl Roberge two years earlier. Now 27, the French trick prodigy turned three-event star was at the peak of his powers. But with the 1980s titans fading, a new generation was knocking—including two brothers from rural Alberta, of all places.
The prelims set the tone. Martin emerged with a narrow lead, just 30 points ahead of 21-year-old Jaret Llewellyn, who had thrown himself into contention with a massive jump score. In the slalom finals, Martin—qualifying as the bottom seed—picked up two extra buoys to widen the gap. Then came tricks, where he claimed yet another world title—his fourth in the event—and solidified his lead.
But the biggest mover was Australia’s Mick Neville. The last of the old guard in overall, Neville delivered a huge final-round score to climb within striking distance of the title. Martin, having failed to make the jump final, could only sit and watch.
The numbers were clear. Martin led by 60 points over Jaret, and 90 over Neville. But it was the elder Llewellyn—Kreg—who turned the event on its head.
Skiing third off the dock, Kreg was known primarily for his tricks, where he’d picked up bronze earlier in the tournament—jumping was the weakest of his three events. But on this day, he uncorked the performance of his life, adding nearly four meters to his prelim mark and launching himself from fourth place to the cusp of an improbable world title. The result was so tight that when the spray settled, no one was sure who had won.
When the computers finished their work, it was Martin clinging to the lead by 0.2 overall points.
Neville, needing just two more meters, couldn’t find it. And Jaret, requiring the first 60-meter jump of his career, came up short. Martin, unshakable once again, had done just enough to defend his title. It would go down as the closest overall finish in the history of the World Championships.
Key Moment: Kreg’s massive leap—it earned him the jump bronze medal, and along with compatriot Jim Clunie’s finals performance, helped Team Canada secure its historic first-ever team victory. But it was 10 centimeters shy of the mark he needed for overall gold.
Winning Margin: 0.2 points. Equivalent to, well, nothing. Just enough for heartbreak.
As the World Championships approach, a quiet but consequential debate is coming to a head: how much is a trick really worth?
At stake is the very structure of trick skiing’s scoring system—a rigid points table that hasn’t fundamentally changed in more than two decades. For athletes like world record holder Joel Poland, that’s no longer acceptable.
“The point values for high-difficulty flips are crippling trick skiing,” Poland told the IWWF Water Ski Council. “It’s limiting what athletes can do.”
Poland should know. Two of his most innovative tricks—the 900-point “UFO” and the 950-point “Matrix”—were recently approved for competition but, in his own words, are “tricks you’ll never see in a tournament” unless something changes. He’s not alone in that sentiment.
A Broken Balance
Trick skiing is unique among board sports: every maneuver has a fixed value, from 40-point surface turns to 950-point flips. The goal is objective scoring. The result? Homogeny.
“Right now the trick point values reward doing more tricks versus doing harder tricks,” said Brooks Wilson on the GrabMatters podcast. “You can get more tricks in because you’re going fast. It’s a speed game.”
That tradeoff—efficiency over difficulty—has shaped elite competition. Instead of variety, most skiers now converge on the same sequence of reliable, high-value tricks.
“We want to see variation,” added Freddie Winter. “Instead, everyone’s forced to do the same kind of runs.”
The Repetition Problem
An analysis of over 100 score sheets at the 2023 World Championships shows just how narrow the tricking landscape has become.
Among hand tricks, backflips dominate. The half twist (BFLB), worth 750 points, appeared in every finalist’s run—typically paired with its reverse. In contrast, the only other trick worth 750, the ski-line seven back, was attempted just once.
The mobe (BFLBB), worth 800 points, was nearly as common, performed by three-quarters of the finalists—far outpacing other tricks in its point range. The basic backflip remains a staple, especially among intermediate-level skiers, tricks worth comparable points, such as W7B, SLBB, and SL5s, were attempted much less often and with much lower success.
Toe tricks show a similar pattern. Toe back-to-backs (TBB) are ubiquitous, appearing in 112 of 117 toe runs (the exceptions were early falls). Toe wake back-to-backs were also incredibly common; the regular and its reverse featured in every single finalist’s toe run. Toe wake tricks worth comparable points, such as TWO or TWLB, were less common, although some of this stems from them not having an easy reverse.
Misaligned Incentives
Not all frequently performed tricks are necessarily overvalued—some, like backflips, may be common because they serve as foundational building blocks for higher-scoring flips. And in toe runs, the inherent physical limitations naturally result in a narrower pool of viable tricks and sequences.
But some mismatches are hard to ignore. Why does the toe wake back-to-back (TWBB) score more than the toe wake 360 (TWO), despite similar difficulty? Why is the mobe front-to-front, attempted only three times at the tournament, valued the same as the standard mobe, which was performed over 100 times?
Take the half cab (BFLF) as another example. Worth 550 points, it was performed just once for every three half twists (BFLB), valued at 750. While it may be true that landing in the back is more difficult than taking off in the back, does that justify a 200-point gap? If so, why are half twists so common—and half cabs so rare?
Innovation Without Reward
In early 2024, the IWWF approved four new flips, including Clarens Lavau’s “Super Half Twist” and Poland’s “UFO.” But even with official approval, no one expects them to appear in major tournaments.
Poland’s “Matrix”—a frontflip with a ski-line 540 from the back position—was awarded 950 points. That’s just 150 more than a basic frontflip, and identical in value to the established super-mobe-five.
“There’s a point where you go, well, the slam it takes to learn this trick is just not going to be worth the extra 50 points,” said Poland. “I was trying to do a super-mobe-seven—a backflip 720 over the rope—but there’s not much point because they’ve made it very clear no trick can be worth more than 1,000 points.”
The scoring ceiling isn’t just discouraging; it’s actively stifling innovation.
“I tried three of them,” Poland added, “and they were the worst crashes of my life. I was like, ‘I’m never gonna try that again.’”
Without a meaningful scoring incentive, tricks like the Matrix may never make it into competition. Even Poland, one of the sport’s most creative skiers, is reconsidering the cost.
“You’re limiting creativity and progression,” said Winter. “Do we want to see the same runs forever—just a bit faster?”
A System Stuck in Neutral
The IWWF knows the problem exists. In a memo last year, Council Chair Candido Moz urged the Tricks Working Group to bring forward point values that better reflect “true difficulty levels.”
But attempts at reform have stalled for years.
“The skiers could never agree on point values,” Moz has explained. “So IWWF never received a proposal.”
That may change this September. A restructured Tricks Working Group, which includes Poland as a member, is expected to present formal recommendations during the World Championships in Recetto.
Time for a Reset?
Poland is done waiting. “In my opinion, [the current system] is crippling trick and limiting the athletes,” he said. He plans to stay vocal in the lead-up to Recetto.
Winter sees trick skiing as the discipline with the most untapped potential. “Right now, it’s just not reaching it,” he said. “But it could.”
The current system rewards repetition and safety. A modernized score table—one that truly values difficulty and risk—could transform the sport overnight.
“You’ve got to blow it up to build it up,” said Wilson.
The World Championships run August 27–31 in Recetto, Italy. A formal review of trick point proposals is expected to take place at the IWWF Water Ski Council meeting during the event.
On a flawless summer morning, with water so flat it blurs the line between lake and sky, some of the world’s best slalom skiers wait their turn. They stretch, limber up, and ready themselves to launch down a course they know as intimately as their own signatures. The cameras roll. The engine’s roar cuts clean through the still air. From a distance, professional water skiing appears unshaken.
But beneath the polish, the sport stands once again on uncertain footing.
Fractured tours, softening prize purses, splintered sponsorships—and a question as old as the slalom course itself: who, exactly, is steering water skiing’s future?
This winter, as tournament schedules for another pro season locked into place, Nautique—the boat manufacturer as synonymous with waterskiing as Wilson is with tennis—quietly severed its final ties with the Waterski Pro Tour for 2025. On paper, it was a footnote. In practice, it was an earthquake.
This is the equivalent of Wimbledon quietly pulling out of the ATP Tour. Or if Augusta told the PGA: We’re good on our own this year, thanks.
Since its inception in 2021, the Pro Tour has been professional skiing’s most unifying force. Born out of pandemic-era recalibration, it bundled previously disconnected events into a coherent narrative, raising prize purses and driving a resurgence of fan interest. It created a season-long arc, elevating once-forgotten stops into destination tournaments. And for a few glorious seasons, the fractured sport of competitive skiing looked, briefly, like a professional tour again.
Nautique’s quiet exit cracks that illusion.
The writing, truthfully, has been on the wall for some time. Nautique is the primary sponsor of water skiing’s two longest-running and highest-paying events—the Moomba Masters and the U.S. Masters—both widely regarded as the sport’s equivalent of Majors. Nautique also serves as the primary organizer of the latter tournament. After its inclusion in the Pro Tour’s inaugural season in 2021, Nautique pulled the Masters out of the Tour. Then, when Moomba returned post-COVID in 2022, they too declined to participate.
A third blow came when the Botaski ProAm, a newer but increasingly important event, stepped away in 2023 after a single season of Pro Tour involvement. Another Nautique-sponsored event, Botaski’s withdrawal reinforced a trend.
Now in 2025, after four seasons as a fixture on the Pro Tour, the California ProAm will join the ranks of the two majors and Botaski on the sidelines. And just like that, the longest-running event on the Pro Tour is relegated to a sideshow—no longer relevant to any season-long narrative, unless one considers qualifying for the U.S. Masters to be the be-all and end-all of the water ski season.
Their reasoning? Officially muted. Representatives from Nautique Boats declined requests for an interview for this article.
It’s difficult—even when granting Nautique every benefit of the doubt—to formulate a coherent rationale for their aversion to the Pro Tour. Let’s be clear: it costs nothing for an event to be included on the Waterski Pro Tour. The perks are numerous—pre- and post-event marketing, social media exposure, highlight packages, and, most importantly, inclusion in an absorbing season-long narrative that gives any result the potential for broader ramifications.
Sure, there’s a reasonable argument for the majors to stay independent. They have the history, they have the brand. Arguably, the Masters’ decision to remain separate from the fledgling Coors Light Water Ski Tour in the 1980s saved it from the fate of other legacy tournaments like the California International Cup and the Tournament of Champions—both subsumed into the Tour brand and ultimately victims of the organization’s financial woes.
But the Waterski Pro Tour is just that: a brand name. It doesn’t take over existing tournaments. It supports them. It adds value. It’s hard to see how a tournament like the Botaski ProAm—begun as a small, men’s-only slalom event in 2018 and since expanded to include women and, more recently, tricks—has a brand strong enough to stand entirely apart. Surely the season-long narrative and visibility the Pro Tour brings is a value-add, not a liability.
The closest thing to a justification is a vision, hinted at publicly by Nautique insider Matt Rini during last year’s California ProAm: the idea of a Nautique-backed international circuit.
“Nautique is all about three-event—building a three-event boat,” he said. “The goal is to have four [tournaments], each featuring all three events, in a season. There’s no jump at Botaski, but they want to add it there. And they want tricks here [in California]. That would be amazing.”
That vision has been echoed before by Brian Sullivan, Nautique’s VP of Marketing, who once described the company’s ambition as “wanting to keep doing bigger and better events, to keep growing the sport—that’s one of our main goals.”
But even that ambition raises questions—chief among them, whether a parallel circuit run by a single manufacturer can truly grow the sport, or simply divide it further.
Nautique’s recent maneuvers, however, haven’t occurred in a vacuum. Taken alongside a string of recent controversies, they appear less like isolated strategic pivots and more like part of a broader pattern: control, consolidation, and increasingly contentious relations with athletes.
In recent years, the company has faced criticism for its rigid gatekeeping of the Masters — from Byzantine qualification procedures to the banning of a world champion for alleged unsportsmanlike conduct — as well as the contentious dismissals of top athletes like Jonathan Travers, Jacinta Carroll, and Patricio Font, raising concerns about its approach to athlete management.
Seen in that light, Nautique’s retreat from the Pro Tour looks less like a routine reshuffle and more like a tightening grip on the sport’s levers of power.
If so, they are not the first to try.
Competing pro tours have been attempted before in water skiing. Rarely with much success. In 1987, the American Water Ski Association launched the short-lived U.S. Grand Prix of Water Skiing to compete with the Coors Light Water Ski Tour. Then again, more dramatically, in 1990, Camille Duvall and a cadre of frustrated skiers attempted a coup. They launched an upstart circuit promising more prize money, athlete control, and safer skiing conditions.
For one turbulent season, skiing had two competing tours: the rebel PAWS circuit and the establishment Michelob Dry Tour. Sherri Slone famously won two pro jump titles on the same day.
The experiment imploded. Both tours crumbled under legal battles, sponsor fatigue, and logistical overload. By 1991, PAWS was gone. The old tour limped along, wounded but intact. The sport never fully recovered its eighties-era swagger.
Today, no one has openly declared “war” like Duvall once did. But Nautique’s move—alongside an already splintered calendar featuring the WWS Overall Tour and standalone events—feels eerily like history tightening its rope again.
On paper, these should be boom times. Each of the past three seasons has brought the highest prize purses in over 15 years. The gender pay gap has shrunk dramatically, from 60 cents on the dollar to near parity. The Waterski Broadcasting Company streams nearly every pro event, in crisp HD, for free. Fans can sit in their living rooms and watch the world’s best almost every weekend.
But peel back the webcast polish and cracks show.
The Swiss Pro Slalom—the sport’s most-watched webcast annually—has just been demoted from the Pro Tour after failing to secure adequate sponsorship. Jumping, once the marquee discipline of water skiing, has seen prize money slashed by more than half in the last decade. Even trick skiing, despite a recent resurgence on the water, still lags far behind its 2000s heyday in financial support.
For the first time since 2020, when the global pandemic shuttered nearly all events, professional prize purses are forecast to decline in 2025.
Even Nate Smith, the most dominant slalom skier of his generation, has quietly taken on a “real job” in recent years to stay afloat. Coaching gigs and benevolent parents remain as crucial as gate setups at 41 off.
It begs the question: can the sport really sustain another professional circuit? Can a niche sport like water skiing afford this level of fragmentation?
The cameras are still rolling. The rope still hangs off the pylon. The skiers will ski. And for now, the sport holds together—if just barely.
But history in this sport doesn’t repeat itself quietly. Every time water skiing has splintered before, it’s taken years to recover. Some fractures have never fully healed.
Now, both sides risk losing something vital.
Nautique’s events—the crown jewels of professional skiing—draw their power from prestige, history, and the feeling that they are the center of the sport’s universe. Walling them off too far from the broader narrative risks dulling their shine, turning majors into outliers.
At the same time, the Pro Tour loses critical legitimacy without the weight of the sport’s longest-standing events on its calendar. Fans, athletes, and sponsors are left navigating a fragmented landscape—unsure which path truly leads to the sport’s future.
The truth is, no one wins a fractured season.
Not Nautique. Not the Tour. Not the athletes. Not the fans.
If the sport is to move forward, it needs everyone—manufacturers, organizers, and athletes—rowing in the same direction again.
POLK CITY, FL — There was a time when 13,000 points in men’s trick skiing felt like a myth. A ceiling. A number whispered with admiration but dismissed with realism. This weekend, Jake Abelson achieved the unthinkable.
On a hot June weekend at Ski Fluid in central Florida, Abelson tricked 13,020 points in the first round of the Bill Wenner Memorial Record tournament. It was a staggering score—one that broke the world record, pending ratification. The next round, he went out and did it again. This time: 13,270.
In a sport where progress inches forward, he had just taken a leap.
In its early decades, the world record climbed by a thousand points every few years—1975, ’77, ’79, ’81, and ’84 each saw new milestones breached as Cory Pickos took the sport over the threshold of 10,000. But as the level of difficulty increased and the stopwatch refused to budge from its 20-second window, progress slowed. From there, each new thousand took longer to fall—six years to reach 11,000 in 1990, another 11 to reach 12,000 in 2001. But 13,000? That mark seemed out of reach. Until now.
From 2005 to 2022, only two men’s world records were ratified—170 total points of progress in 17 years. Trick skiing was often called the most stagnant of the three events. Then came a renaissance, kicked off in late 2022 by Mexico’s Patricio Font, who broke Aliaksei Zharnasek’s 11-year-old record. In the span of 18 months, the event transformed from glacial to white-hot.
That sudden acceleration in progression? It didn’t come from nowhere.
No one embodies that shift more than Jake Abelson.
Abelson is 17. His dad was an elite-level trick skier. His mom? A Junior Masters champion and a regular on the pro slalom and trick scene in the 2000s. His cousin is Patricio Font. He’s a second-generation athlete with deep family ties to the sport—raised with access to the best coaches, the best equipment, and the best ski sites in the world. His story isn’t one of accidental talent. It’s one of purposeful design.
What separates Abelson isn’t just his résumé. It’s the way he blends nearly every key ingredient that defines the modern trick skiing elite.
He has the raw power and strength of Zharnasek, enabling him to throw audacious tricks like wake-seven-front-to-front and ski-line-seven-back-to-back. He has the speed and precision of Font, unlocking the ability to squeeze in one more trick before the 20-second buzzer. And perhaps most importantly, he skis with the quiet poise of a gymnast who’s spent years training for perfection under pressure.
That’s not just metaphor. Jake still competes as a level 10 gymnast. Like Erika Lang, who transferred her tumbling background into becoming one of the greatest women’s trickers of all time, Abelson has brought aerial awareness and body control into a sport that now demands both in spades.
“In trick skiing, the goal is to perform as many high scoring tricks as possible in 20 seconds,” he said. “At a high level, more speed is required to add another trick or upgrade a preexisting one.”
Abelson spent last winter hammering one trick over and over—wake-seven-front-to-front, a brutally difficult 800-point move with a 720-degree spin and two handle passes. By April’s Swiss Pro Tricks, he could land it cleanly and on time, without derailing the rest of the run. In May 2024, he nearly broke 13,000 at a Masters Qualifier, missing the mark by inches—falling on the last two tricks. It was the proof of concept.
Fast forward to June 2025, and he executed.
But there’s a deeper layer to why this is happening now—and why it might not last forever.
Tricking is, at its core, a race against time. And to move faster, it helps to be lighter.
“You’ve got to look at body types,” said Joel Poland on a recent episode of the Grab Matters podcast. “When you’re smaller, you weigh 130 to 150 pounds, faster is easier. You can go slower with the boat, you can move a little faster. As you become a bigger person, you can keep that speed and learn to go fast—but it definitely gets harder.”
That dynamic makes Abelson’s moment feel especially fleeting and perfectly timed. He has the technical base, the gymnastic strength, the trick lineage—but also, the age and size to make speed work for him, not against him. In a few years, his approach might need to change. For now, it’s the perfect storm.
Abelson is quick to credit others. Matias Gonzalez and Martin Labra, the young Chileans pushing boundaries in toe tricks. Joel Poland, whose creativity and flair have inspired Abelson to explore more ambitious sequences. And Font, who reimagined the hand pass with blistering speed and composure.
As Gonzalez put it: “To consistently trick over 12k, the most important thing [is] to focus on speed,” said the 17-year-old Chilean, who already has multiple professional titles under his belt. “Pato showed that 11 tricks on hands were possible. That set the new standard.”
Abelson echoed the point almost word-for-word, crediting “the increase in speed which was demonstrated by Font” as the catalyst for this new era.
The skiing world was forced to take notice. From 2019 to 2023, Font won two World Championships and eight pro titles—one of the highest winning percentages in the history of modern trick skiing. “His consistency,” Abelson said, “[forced] the other competitors to put more time on the water just to be able to compete.”
Abelson’s rise feels sudden, but the data tells a deeper story. In April 2024, his personal best was 11,980. Then, in the span of one month: six scores over 12,000, including two world records at 12,720 and 12,970. His form in 2025 has been unmatched—winning the Moomba Masters, then the US Masters, and now potentially breaking the world record twice.
His record-setting run wasn’t a spike. It was a detonation—evidence not of a fluke, but of an athlete who’s shifted the benchmark.
And he’s not alone. Gonzalez and Labra are close behind. Louis Duplan-Fribourg of France, the reigning world overall champion, has a personal best over 12,500. Font still looms—consistent, decorated, and hungry.
“We started pushing ourselves to a better level,” said Labra. “Being with Mati [Gonzalez] since we were kids… and after that Jake, it helped me a lot to improve… to try to beat [them], we helped each other to be better.”
But Abelson’s ceiling might be higher still.
He’s not just a phenomenal tricker. He’s emerging as one of the most complete skiers in the world—just named to the 2025 U.S. World Championship team in overall. He skis all three events. He tricks like a specialist. And he’s the first American man to hold the world trick record since Cory Pickos in 2001.
In that sense, Abelson’s moment is bigger than a number. It’s a glimpse of what’s possible: not just in trick, but in the sport as a whole.
The only question now: is this the new ceiling—or just the start of something even bigger?
Last weekend, some of the world’s best jumpers went soaring under the lights in Zachary, Louisiana. The LA Night Jam had it all: a packed shoreline, festival energy, world champions, rising stars, and Waterski Pro Tour points on the line.
But unless you were there in person, you didn’t see a second of it.
There was no webcast. No slo-mo replays. No expert commentary. No drone shots capturing heroic flight. Just the dry final results, posted to an anachronistic website after the spray had settled—black-and-white numbers standing in for what was, by all accounts, one of the most electric nights of the season.
And for diehard fans like me, that felt like a gut punch.
In the post-COVID era, we’ve grown used to watching every pro event live, for free, from anywhere in the world. The quality of these broadcasts has never been better, thanks in large part to The Waterski Broadcasting Company (TWBC). But cracks are starting to show in that model—and there’s a quiet, potentially growing shift away from relying on livestreams to carry the weight of an event.
Two of the four stops on the 2024 WWS Overall Tour were not broadcast, including the Canada Cup, which doubled as a Waterski Pro Tour jump stop and delivered some of the season’s most thrilling competition. The Fungliss ProAm, with the richest men’s slalom purse of the year, also eschewed a webcast.
Why? Because streaming costs money. And despite loyal viewership, the audience hasn’t really grown. TWBC’s YouTube views have plateaued since 2020. The downgrade of the Swiss Pro Slalom—still the most-watched water ski webcast every year—drives the point home: if the sport’s most visible livestream can’t generate enough sponsor revenue to stay on tour, something’s broken.
Still, many—including me—believe high-quality webcasts are a worthwhile investment. Maybe the audience isn’t there yet. But what better vehicle exists to grow the sport long-term? Who else is grinding to tell skiing’s story with the polish and persistence of TWBC?
That doesn’t mean, though, that every tournament needs to look the same.
The LA Night Jam reminds us there’s another way—one rooted in the past, but maybe just as vital to the future.
Rather than catering to a global digital audience, LA Night Jam pours its resources into the on-site experience. It’s a deliberate throwback—a water ski festival, as event coordinator Tucker Johnson described it in a local TV interview: “It’s fun for the whole family… a pro tournament set up with tons of events around it as well.”
There are trick exhibitions. Slalom head-to-heads. Freestyle skiers. Adorable kids on combos. In one memorable stunt, someone even barefooted out of a hot air balloon. It’s all designed to dazzle the crowd—many of whom arrive knowing nothing about water skiing and leave wanting more.
The funding model reflects that philosophy. Instead of relying on industry sponsors trying to reach a global audience, the event is backed by local businesses. Their website, perhaps vindictively, notes that the “event is not sponsored by MasterCraft Boat Co.”—a nod to the departure of their former headline sponsor and the pivot toward a community-first approach. It’s a stark contrast to the traditional, industry-funded model.
Here, the crowd isn’t just a backdrop. It’s the point.
And LA Night Jam isn’t alone. The 2024 WWS Canada Cup followed a similar formula: local crowd, local sponsors, no webcast. We’ve also praised the King of Darkness for its festival-like atmosphere and crowd engagement—though that event still pairs its in-person spectacle with a top-shelf livestream.
These formats don’t just recycle the same core audience—they expand it. They draw in new families, new eyeballs, and potentially new sponsors. Yes, physical crowds come with constraints—parking, logistics, capacity. But they offer something livestreams haven’t cracked yet: the ability to convert the curious into the committed.
As reigning world champion Freddie Winter put it recently on the TWBC podcast: “We shouldn’t just be skiing in backyard tournaments… getting in front of people is also fantastic.”
Back when waterskiing was booming, it had both—crowds and broadcasts. Passion and reach.
So maybe it’s not about choosing one or the other. Maybe it’s about trying everything, everywhere, all at once. Because if there’s one thing the sport can’t afford right now, it’s to put all its eggs in one basket.
It’s become cliché to quote the line about insanity being doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. But it’s worth reflecting on. TWBC has poured heart and soul into their livestreams. And while their numbers are respectable, they haven’t meaningfully grown in five years. Meanwhile, their side projects like The Unknown Sport of Waterskiing and The Rise of Waterskiing arguably have the greatest potential of breaking through to new audiences.
At the same time, LA Night Jam and others like it are bringing fresh energy, new money, and new eyeballs into the sport—and paying athletes in the process.
With only five pro jump events on the 2025 calendar, every one counts. The fact that LA Night Jam delivered a full purse without a webcast isn’t a failure—it’s a sign of creativity and resilience.
So maybe the real takeaway is this: not everything in waterskiing needs to be built for people like me. Sometimes the best thing we can do for the sport is reach someone who’s never seen it before. Ideally, yes, we’d have both—a packed shoreline and a global livestream. But if resources are limited, I’m glad events are experimenting.
Throw enough at the wall, and something might just stick.
The future of water skiing won’t come from clinging to one tournament model. It will come from daring to try new ways to bring the sport to life.
If that means leaving some fans in the dark—so be it. But if it means lighting up a new generation, then the gamble is worth it.
Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly implied that the Lake 38 ProAm had shifted away from TWBC for budget reasons. In fact, TWBC was the organizers’ first choice, but was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts.
In the early morning glass of a Florida lake, Will Asher slices the slalom course like a man trying to solve a riddle only he can hear. At 42, he shouldn’t be this vigorous. But this ride isn’t just about winning—it’s about understanding.
That understanding, it turns out, might be the only thing keeping him going.
In a season that was supposed to mark the rise of the next generation, it was the old master who stood tallest. Asher, already a two-time world champion and one of the most decorated slalom skiers of all time, didn’t just show up in 2024—he took over. Four professional wins, more than double the next closest competitor. A three-stop sweep through Morocco, the south of France, and Monaco, where he ran 10.25 meters (41’ off) not once, but twice. Against men half his age, Will Asher was untouchable.
Ask what changed, and he doesn’t talk about dominance—he talks about freedom.
“We made a breakthrough [with my equipment],” he said in a recent episode of the FPM Podcast with Marcus Brown. “And when you get to that point, you’re able to just switch off.”
There’s a calmness to Asher now—a kind of peace forged not by slowing down, but by refining his purpose. In a sport where most of his contemporaries have long since moved on, he’s still here. Still evolving. Still building.
Charting a New Course
What do you do when you’ve won almost everything? For Asher, the answer wasn’t to walk away. It was to go deeper.
Ski design—once a curiosity, now an obsession—has become his new frontier. His latest creation, the Syndicate Works 01, isn’t just a ski. It’s the result of a decade-long search for feel, feedback, and flow. A physical manifestation of everything he’s learned—and everything he still doesn’t know.
For Asher, it’s not about tournament wins anymore. It’s about chasing the perfect feel.
And it’s not just about his performance. It’s about the craft. The satisfaction of building something that matters.
“It’s like my babies,” he says. “Thousands of my children out there that people are trying to experience. And it does feel good when people say, ‘That changed my life.’ That’s their release. Their enjoyment. Their pleasure.”
This isn’t legacy-building. It’s presence. Pride. Passion shared.
Asher often speaks of skiing as more than sport. It’s structure. It’s meaning. A daily ritual that gives shape to life.
“Yeah,” he says, when asked if skiing brings purpose. “It keeps me on the straight and narrow. Keeps me motivated. Gets me up in the morning. Makes me go to bed. Make good decisions… most of the time.”
But underneath the laugh is something harder. At 42, he knows his competitive days are numbered. And he’s honest about what comes next.
“Essentially a piece of me is going to die,” he says. “We don’t see the timer, but we know there’s a timer. [Maybe] this year, maybe next year, it could happen next week.”
Then, more quietly: “And when people put their whole life into one thing and it suddenly goes away—it’s full of depression and anxiety. You’ve got to fill that hole, right?”
That’s the part athletes don’t talk about. The collapse waiting just off-stage. The slow erasure of identity. For Asher, the antidote isn’t legacy. It’s curiosity.
“I think specialization is a terrible thing,” he says. “[It’s] one of the worst things that can happen for the potential of a child in athletics. I don’t understand why it’s not also true for adults.”
He finds refuge in other routines: cycling, lifting, running, foiling. “It’s like my kind of therapy,” he says. “To get away from everything.”
Even his on-water habits reflect that mindset. “I will actively go out of my way to not ski with people that are just too obsessed and cannot switch it off.”
Another form of escape? R&D.
Asher’s work with HO Skis has become a space beyond the slalom course. A place where he can tinker, rebuild, and reimagine what a ski can be.
He talks about design with reverence. Like a miner chasing gold.
“You know there’s gold down there,” he says. “You’ve done the tests. You’ve done the experiments. You see it—it’s there. But you still have to go dig it out.”
That treasure—the perfect ski—remains elusive. And maybe that’s the point.
“As crazy as it may sound, after 20 years I’m still trying to understand the basics,” he says. “It’s unbelievable how many variables there are in just one ski.”
Flex. Rocker. Width. Concave. Materials. Layup. The way a ski flexes and twists. It all matters. And yet, no formula guarantees feel.
“On paper, you can maximize everything. [But] if you maximize everything, that thing doesn’t work,” he says. “You can get performance, but sometimes it’s almost scary. To actually go to that place on the ski—it’s not comfortable.”
Still, he chases it.
“I feel like it’s my life’s work to get all that to come together into one place.”
Staying Unfinished
It’s not just theory. Asher’s skis are reshaping how elite skiers approach the sport. Team Syndicate riders won more than 40% of all professional slalom titles last season, with roughly the same share of podiums. An extraordinary haul in a field where seven different ski brands earned at least one win.
Less rigidity. More feel. Less fear. More flow.
The lab has become a second course. A proving ground for risk and reinvention.
Because perfection isn’t really the point. The point is to keep going.
What’s most remarkable about Asher isn’t the titles—though there are plenty. It’s that, two decades in, he still believes there’s something essential left to discover. That his life’s work isn’t a résumé of wins, but a trail of questions.
And that legacy is starting to echo—in younger skiers looking beyond the podium. In those chasing meaning, not just medals.
That’s Will Asher’s influence. Not just as a champion. But as a craftsman. A philosopher of flow. A man still mid-process.
Back on the lake, Asher is testing again. Not skiing for scores, but for feel. Riding a prototype. Making notes. Chasing something invisible.
It’s not about being the best anymore. It’s about staying unfinished.
Because the perfect ski—like the perfect run—probably doesn’t exist.
But if you spend your life looking for it… maybe that’s enough.
CLERMONT, FLA. — One of water skiing’s most exclusive clubs has a new—and youngest ever—member.
On Sunday at the Swiss Spring Classic, 19-year-old Canadian phenom Charlie Ross ran 1 buoy at 9.75 metres (43-off), becoming just the 16th skier in history to complete the fabled 10.25-metre (41-off) pass in tournament conditions. The score not only joins him to slalom royalty—it also sets a pending World Under-21 and Canadian Open record.
At 19 years and eight months, Ross surpasses Nate Smith’s mark as the youngest skier ever to achieve the feat. Smith, who first ran 41-off at age 20 years and six months, has long been the benchmark for modern slalom skiing. Now, that mantle may have been taken.
For close watchers of the pro scene, Ross’s breakthrough is less a surprise and more an inevitability fulfilled. His rise has been relentless: six Under-17 world record slalom performances (including a staggering 4 @ 10.25m as a junior in 2022), three successive Under-21 world records, and, most recently, a debut professional victory at the Moomba Masters this March—where he outdueled veterans and prodigies alike to win men’s slalom at one of the sport’s most storied events.
That Moomba final felt like a preview of the chaos defining modern men’s slalom. In an era where parity reigns—ten different pro event winners in 2024 alone—the Melbourne showdown was vintage unpredictability. Sixteen-year-old Damien Eade flashed early brilliance; the ever-versatile Joel Poland showcased his strength; Freddie Winter, just nine months removed from a broken femur, clawed back into relevance; and Lucas Cornale ignited the home crowd before Thomas Degasperi, ever the tactician, set the mark to beat. Skiing last, Ross answered with the highest score of the event to clinch the title—becoming the youngest Moomba Masters champion since Carl Roberge in the early 1980s.
A statement win for a skier whose pedigree feels almost like destiny. His father, Drew Ross, was a mainstay on the pro circuit through the ’90s and 2000s, anchoring Team Canada’s success. His sister, Neilly Ross, holds the current women’s world record in tricks and is an elite slalom contender. Raised at a ski school in central Florida, Ross honed his craft under the dual pillars of year-round conditions and top-tier coaching.
But raw talent only explains so much. Ross has become a student of the sport in the purest sense—obsessing over historical footage, deconstructing the gates of legends like Andy Mapple, Will Asher, and Freddie Winter, and dissecting body position frame by frame to edge his form closer to perfection.
“You can’t substitute for volume, volume on the water,” Ross told Marcus Brown on The FPM Podcast earlier this year. He also stressed the value of “bouncing different ideas off different people,” citing the advantage of training at multiple sites and the dense concentration of world-class coaches in central Florida.
Ross’s rise has also been fueled by a deliberate transformation off the water. Long one of the lightest skiers on tour (a wiry 6’2” and 138 pounds last season), he dedicated his winter to gaining strength—adding 20 pounds of muscle to balance agility with durability. The payoff was evident in Melbourne and again this weekend in Clermont, where his composed, powerful style carried him into waterski immortality.
Remarkably, Ross balances his professional ascent with a heavy academic load. A freshman at Rollins College, he juggles coursework with a travel schedule stretching across hemispheres. As the packed 2025 season unfolds—with eyes on the Under-21 World Championships on home soil later this year and a full slate of pro majors—his trajectory shows no signs of slowing.
Beyond his own ambitions, Ross sees slalom entering a pivotal era—one that echoes the rapid evolution recently seen in men’s tricks.
“It was only a few years ago we were asking if tricking 13,000 points was possible, what’s the points per second?” Ross said. “Now it’s guys like Mati, Tincho, Jake, Pato, and Joel—all right on the door.”
He predicts a similar surge in slalom, as a wave of young talents—including Lucas Cornale and the Eade brothers—begin to challenge the sport’s established elite.
“In a couple years, every tournament might take a near world record to win,” Ross said. “It’s going to be crazy.”
As the sport braces for a wave of record-breaking performances, Ross intends to lead the charge. “I want to chase running 43,” he said, referencing the 9.75m line length where the current world record stands at 2.5 buoys. “I don’t know if it’s even close to possible,” he added, “but when I’m done with my career, I want to be able to say I did everything I can to run 43.”
On Saturday, he took the first giant step toward that future. The 41-Off Club has a new name on its roster—and he’s just getting started.
The 2025 Swiss Pro Slalom will not feature on the Waterski Pro Tour after the event failed to meet the minimum prize purse threshold required for tour inclusion. A blip? A bureaucratic technicality? Or is it a mirror held up to the broader struggles of professional waterskiing?
The numbers are clear cut: a total prize purse of $12,000—half of last year’s offering—falls below the threshold required to maintain its star-level status. Technically, it could qualify as an introductory event, but only if it hadn’t worn the badge of a higher-tier competition in both 2023 and 2024. So here we are, with a top-tier webcast and world-class athletes, but an event that no longer qualifies for the official tour it helped define.
And therein lies the tension.
In many ways, the Swiss Pro Slalom is the blueprint for modern waterski events. Held in the heart of Central Florida—a stone’s throw for most of the world’s elite—it minimizes travel costs and sidesteps the logistical sprawl of international hosting. There’s no scramble to pack bleachers with spectators. Instead, the focus is squarely on the screen, with a heavy investment in producing a polished, professional webcast. In fact, the Swiss Pro has served as the unofficial proving ground for The Waterski Broadcasting Company (TWBC), the undisputed titan of waterski streaming. It’s their backyard. It’s their home court. And it shows.
But for all its polish, the money has rarely matched the production quality. Since its 2015 inception, the Swiss Pro Slalom has usually operated on the financial fringes. Its status has bobbed between introductory and non-qualifying levels, only recently ascending to a more lucrative tier in 2023 and 2024—before falling back again this year.
Yet despite modest prize purses, Swiss Pro Slalom remains TWBC’s most viewed webcast every year. It routinely eclipses richer, flashier tournaments with deeper sponsor pockets. Which begs the obvious question: does prize money matter as much as we think it does?
If viewership is the metric that counts, then maybe not. But if professional waterskiing becomes a loop of Central Florida-based events rewarding only the top three athletes, the ceiling lowers fast. There’s a real danger the sport becomes a closed circuit: elite, expensive to enter, and hard to sustain.
Current event funding models lean heavily on a trio of lifelines—endemic sponsors, community benefactors, and increasingly, athlete entry fees. That’s a brittle structure. One good gust and it all falls apart. And yet, the answer may not be to pour more into the prize pot, but to grow the audience instead.
Which is precisely what TWBC is trying to do.
Armed with high-tech cameras, drones, slick graphics, and expert commentators, TWBC has become the face of waterski broadcasting. In 2024 alone, it streamed 10 of the 13 Waterski Pro Tour events. Its influence is unmissable. Since COVID-era lockdowns drove viewership online, TWBC’s numbers have surged—at least initially. But since 2020, YouTube viewership has plateaued. Publicly available data shows a consistency in viewer counts, not growth. Maybe the deeper analytics tell a different story, but the surface stats suggest a ceiling has been hit.
Still, the ambition hasn’t waned. TWBC’s 2023 documentary project drew over 140,000 views, taking a page from Formula One’s “Drive to Survive” playbook. But the follow-up series, The Rise of Waterskiing, hasn’t yet caught fire. The sport is still waiting for its breakout moment.
Meanwhile, nearly every major player in the sport is all-in on TWBC. And for fans, this might just be the golden age. You can watch almost every event live, for free, and in better quality than ever before. But current viewership alone doesn’t pay the bills—or the prize checks. If it did, the Swiss Pro Slalom wouldn’t be fighting for tour status.
So here we are. The Swiss Pro Slalom won’t appear on the Waterski Pro Tour in 2025. But it’ll still feature a stacked field of athletes. It’ll still be produced with unmatched polish. And if history is any guide, it’ll still be the most watched event of the year. For all its flaws, it remains one of the best exhibitions of pro slalom skiing.
Will that be enough?
I’ll be watching. Odds are, if you’ve read this far, you will too. And maybe that’s the metric that matters most.
After all, if a rope is shortened at the lake and no one sees it, did it really happen?
Cast your mind back to 2019, pre-pandemic, when the waterski world still felt a little simpler. Ski boats were still under six figures, webcasts were homemade affairs, and Joel Poland’s bid for world domination was in its infancy. If you had to pick the next big thing in slalom back then, there was only one correct answer: Robert Pigozzi.
At 21 years old, with arms like tree trunks and a gold chain around his neck, Pigozzi could have been mistaken for a swashbuckling young baseball star – the national pastime of his native Dominican Republic. Instead, he channeled his strength into ripping tow pylons out of their sockets. His leans put even Freddie Winter to shame.
In 2015, he won the Under-17 World Championships, setting a record that would stand for almost a decade. That same year, as a 17-year-old, he finished runner-up at the Under-21 Worlds. By the age of 20, he’d already won his first professional tournament and became just the 12th member of the 41-off club (though many keyboard warriors would question the legitimacy of scores from that event). In 2019, he earned seven top-five finishes in professional events, including an incredible European tour run where he claimed a second pro title alongside three runner-up finishes. He capped off his breakout season with gold at the Pan American Games.
He finished that season fourth in the Elite Standings, making him one of only two skiers (alongside Stephen Neveu) to break into the top four past the unbeatable quartet of Smith, Winter, Asher, and Degasperi over the last five years of the Elite Rankings.
Yes, it helped that Nate Smith was sidelined for much of 2019 due to his SafeSport investigation and subsequent suspension, but Pigozzi’s skiing was the real deal. In 2019, he scored three or more at 10.25 meters (41’ off) eight times in professional competition, including on the notoriously challenging Yarra River.
Fast forward to 2024, and Pigozzi has changed. He’s matured. He’s married. He’s running multiple side hustles, balancing his entrepreneurial ventures with the demands of being a professional athlete. Perhaps the shift in priorities has affected his performance. Last year, he entered just four pro events, finishing 22nd, 15th, 12th, and 17th. He managed to run 10.75 meters (39.5’ off) only once.
At the season’s final event, he looked like a fish out of water. On his opening pass at 13 meters (32’ off), Pigozzi inexplicably pulled up narrow for two ball. Given a reprieve by the best-of-two-rounds format, he looked shaky throughout his second round, repeating the same mistake into six ball on his third pass at 11.25 meters (38’ off).
Even reigning world champion Freddie Winter couldn’t make sense of it: “I am honestly floored. I’ve seen a lot of stuff in waterskiing, but I would’ve put my house on him getting around six. He was cruising, but then suddenly, he’s pulling on the inside and narrow.”
Pigozzi’s form has been on a downward trend for a while now. He hasn’t had a top-five finish since 2021 and has made just two finals in the past two years. In the last five seasons, he’s recorded fewer scores of three or more at 10.25 meters (41’ off) in pro competition than he did in 2019 alone.
Perhaps there’s no way back from this slump for Pigozzi, once the shining star of world slalom skiing. He turns 28 this year, tied the knot, and the responsibilities of adulthood are catching up with him.
But at his best, no one slalomed quite like the strapping Dominican. When running late, he’d drop the hammer, with leans so deep he seemed parallel with the water. A boat driver’s worst nightmare (it’s perhaps not surprising his father is one of the most highly regarded in the world), he was the skier who made you think, “That’s how it should be done. If only I were stronger, braver, younger.”
Where Nate Smith and his many imitators make shortline skiing look effortless, Pigozzi at his best made it look like something anyone could do—if they were just a little more daring. His style harkened back to the power of slalom greats like Kjellander and LaPoint—raw strength combined with dogged determination. It’s the kind of firepower and excitement the sport often lacks today.
So let’s hope there are more chapters to be written in Pigozzi’s story. He remains one of water skiing’s finest sluggers.
Independent perspectives on tournament water skiing
