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Joel Poland at the WWS Canada Cup

Versatile Elite: The Skiers Who Have Won Professional Titles in All Three Events

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Versatile elite: The skiers who have won professional titles in all three events

Joel Poland at the WWS Canada Cup

Image: @johnnyhayward_photo

By Jack Burden

Modern water skiing has become increasingly specialized. The best slalom skiers are chasing fractions of a buoy at short line, trickers are pushing the limits of speed, precision and difficulty, and jumpers are reaching distances that demand an entirely different set of physical and technical skills.

That makes Joel Poland’s achievement in Calgary particularly significant. He did not simply add a professional slalom title to an already impressive résumé; he completed a feat that has become increasingly rare as the sport has evolved. Poland has spent years competing at the highest level in all three disciplines, against specialists who have never been better.

It is a club dominated by Australians, largely because Australia was the birthplace of professional water skiing. For its first 11 years, the Moomba Masters was the world’s only professional water ski tournament, before the California International Cup launched the first American professional event in 1972. Those early competitions gave Australian skiers a head start in building the kind of all-around résumés that have become increasingly difficult to replicate.

Poland is now the latest to do it.

Here are the 12 athletes who have conquered all three of water skiing’s disciplines at the highest level.

@joelpoland celebrates his slalom win during the Rocky Mountain Pro Am at @predatorbay in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Poland celebrates his maiden professional slalom victory (image: @johnnyhayward_photo)

Joel Poland

Confirmed professional titles (2021-Present): 35 — 1 slalom, 2 tricks, 15 jump, 17 overall

Poland’s arrival is perhaps the most fitting addition to the group because versatility has been the defining characteristic of his career.

After a breakout 2021 season in which he broke the world overall record and became embroiled in one of the great modern overall battles with Dorien Llewellyn, Poland has gone on to win four consecutive WWS Overall Tour season titles, remaining undefeated since 2022 and setting nine world records.

The Brit has also developed a reputation as one of the sport’s most innovative and exciting trick skiers, inventing multiple new flips while consistently featuring on professional trick podiums. In jump, he has established himself among the best in the world, winning back-to-back Waterski Pro Tour season titles and the 2025 World Championship.

Until Calgary, though, there was one conspicuous omission.

Slalom.

The water skiing world had few doubts about Poland’s ceiling in the event, particularly after his redemptive and dramatic entry into the 41-off club at the 2023 World Championships. He had found his way onto multiple professional slalom podiums, but gold had eluded him.

That changed at the Rocky Mountain ProAm.

After tying Charlie Ross at 3 @ 10.25m (41′ off) in the final, Poland took the runoff when Ross fell coming out of five at 10.75m (39.5′ off). Poland then completed the six-buoy pass to claim his maiden professional slalom title.

The reaction made clear what the victory meant. Poland had won almost everything else there was to win. Now he could finally say he had won professionally in all three events.

At 27, there is still plenty of time for 35 titles to become a much larger number.

Regina Jaquess at the 2015 Malibu Cup

Jaquess is arguably the greatest water skier of all time, male or female (image: @regina_jaquess)

Regina Jaquess

Confirmed professional titles (2000-Present): 84 — 72 slalom, 5 tricks, 5 jump, 2 overall

If Poland’s inclusion is new, Regina Jaquess has been sitting in the club for years.

It is difficult to find a more complete résumé in the history of the sport. Jaquess won her first World Championship title in tricks at 17 and went on to win five World Championship overall titles, along with 19 World Championship medals and three Pan American Games overall titles.

Slalom, however, became the foundation of her career.

She has broken or equaled the women’s slalom world record nine times and has held the record continuously since 2009. She has run 10.75m more times than every other woman combined and has won more than 60 percent of the professional slalom tournaments she has ever entered.

Her professional record now stands at 84 titles.

That includes five professional trick titles, five in jump and two overall titles, enough to make her the only woman this century in the three-event professional club.

Her longevity is almost as remarkable as her dominance. Jaquess has continued to win professional titles into her 40s while also running a business outside the sport.

Poland joining her in this particular club feels appropriate. Both are skiers who have spent much of their careers refusing to be defined by a single event.

Waterski champion Karen Bowkett Neville

Karen and her husband Mick made up one of the sport’s greatest duos through the 1980s (image: VINTAGE WATER SKI PHOTOS)

Karen Bowkett Neville

Confirmed professional titles (1979-1993): 26 — 3 slalom, 9 tricks, 2 jump, 12 overall

Karen Bowkett Neville was one of the central figures of Australia’s golden generation and one of the greatest overall skiers of the 1980s.

She won the World Championship overall title in 1985 and 1991 and stood on the overall podium at four consecutive World Championships. Her influence extended beyond her individual results, too, as she helped lead Australia to three consecutive runner-up finishes in the team competition from 1985 through 1989.

The Moomba Masters was where Neville was particularly dominant. She won eight overall titles and accumulated 20 titles across the four disciplines, placing her alongside Kaye Thurlow Faulkner as the most successful skier in the history of the tournament by total victories.

Her versatility was not an accident. Tricks were arguably her strongest event, but she was capable of winning wherever she competed, including overall victories at both the U.S. Masters and U.S. Open.

She remains one of only six women to have won the World Championship overall title more than once.

Deena Brush Mapple at the U.S. Masters

The Queen of Water Skiing (image: VINTAGE WATER SKI PHOTOS)

Deena Brush Mapple

Confirmed professional titles (1977-1993): 99 — 25 slalom, 1 tricks, 58 jump, 15 overall

Deena Brush Mapple’s résumé is enormous even by the standards of this group.

Known as the “Queen of Water Skiing,” the American spent 25 years at the top of the sport, winning back-to-back World Championship overall titles in 1987 and 1989 and collecting 15 World Championship medals.

Her dominance at the U.S. Masters was even more striking. She won 20 titles across slalom, jump and overall, including 14 after the event became professional in 1985. In women’s overall, she lost only once at the Masters between 1985 and 1993.

Jump was her defining event. She won four World Championship jump titles and broke the world jump record five times, pushing the mark from 39.3 meters (129 feet) in 1979 to 47.5 meters (156 feet) by 1988.

But she was hardly a one-event skier.

Brush Mapple also broke or tied the world slalom record five times, won three U.S. Masters slalom titles and claimed a Moomba Masters slalom title. She even won the overall season championship on the PAWS Budget Rent-a-Car Waterski Tour in 1990.

Her presumed 100-plus professional titles remain one of the largest totals in the history of the sport.

Mick Neville of Australia

Mick Neville

Confirmed professional titles (1981-1990): 15 — 2 slalom, 8 tricks, 1 jump, 4 overall

Mick Neville was the last man to accomplish what Poland just did.

Neville was one of the great trick skiers of the 1980s, winning the Moomba Masters trick title seven times and appearing on every World Championship tricks podium from 1981 through 1987.

He was also a formidable overall skier, winning two World Championship silver medals in two of the closest overall races in the history of the tournament.

His greatest season came toward the end of his career in 1990. Neville won overall at the U.S. Masters, took the tricks title at the U.S. Open and added two tour victories on the Michelob Dry Waterski Tour, one in slalom and one in jump.

That was enough to give him professional victories in all three events.

It took 36 years for another man to join him.

World Champion Cindy Todd

Todd’s comeback season in 1975 was an almost instant success (image: VINTAGE WATER SKI PHOTOS)

Cindy Hutcherson Todd

Confirmed professional titles (1977-1988): 25 — 10 slalom, 2 tricks, 9 jump, 4 overall

Cindy Hutcherson Todd was one of the defining figures of professional water skiing before the U.S. Pro Tour fully took shape.

After stepping away from the sport as a teenager, Todd returned to competition in the mid-1970s and immediately made up for lost time. In her comeback season in 1975, she broke the world slalom record and won the Open Women’s title at the U.S. Nationals.

Over the course of her career, she would break the slalom record four more times, moving the mark from 2 @ 12m (35 off) to 2 @ 11.25m (38 off).

Her versatility was remarkable. Todd won three World Championship slalom titles, four U.S. Masters overall titles and eight Masters titles across slalom, tricks and jump.

She was also a seven-time World Championship medalist and one of the great overall competitors of her generation.

World Overall Champion Mike Hazelwood

Image: Yvon le Gall

Mike Hazelwood

Confirmed professional titles (1977-1987): 50 — 3 slalom, 2 tricks, 39 jump, 6 overall

Mike Hazelwood is perhaps the most obvious example of how many great jumpers begin as talented overall skiers.

The Brit became one of the biggest names on the professional circuit during the 1980s, winning jump in three of the first four seasons of the Coors Light Water Ski Tour. But his career began much earlier as an extraordinary three-event skier.

Hazelwood won the men’s overall title at the 1977 World Championships and remained a fixture on the World Championship podium for the next six years. He won eight consecutive European overall titles from 1976 through 1983 and four consecutive U.S. Masters overall titles from 1978 through 1981.

One of very few skiers who can sincerely say they conquered the Yarra River, Hazelwood won titles in slalom, tricks, jump and overall during his golden run in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That included setting his first world jump record at Moomba in 1980 and an incredible five consecutive Moomba overall titles from 1977 to 1981.

Bruce Cockburn jumps at the Moomba Masters

Image: Graine de Sport

Bruce Cockburn

Confirmed professional titles (1970-1978): 14 — 5 slalom, 3 tricks, 4 jump, 2 overall

Bruce Cockburn was a prodigy in tricks before becoming one of the best slalom skiers and jumpers of his generation.

He won the World Trick Championship in 1969 and helped pioneer tricks such as reverse toe turns that would become staples of the event. As his career progressed, he shifted toward slalom and jump, eventually becoming a dominant force on the Yarra River.

When professional skiing got a foothold in the United States, Cockburn became the first Australian to regularly compete abroad, winning multiple titles at the California International Cup in the mid-1970s.

His 14 professional titles were spread across all three events and overall, making him one of the earliest examples of the kind of versatility that would become increasingly difficult to find as the sport specialized.

Kaye Thurlow at the 1969 World Water Ski Championships

Kaye Thurlow receives her Australian team blazer for the 1969 World Championships in Denmark (image: VINTAGE WATER SKI PHOTOS)

Kaye Thurlow Faulkner

Confirmed professional titles (1968-1977): 23 — 2 slalom, 5 tricks, 7 jump, 9 overall

Kaye Thurlow Faulkner was one of the dominant women of the early professional era.

She represented Australia at five consecutive World Championships from 1967 through 1975, collecting eight medals across tricks, jump and overall. She also competed in the 1972 Olympic demonstration in Munich, finishing second in tricks, jump and overall.

Her greatest stage was the Moomba Masters.

Thurlow Faulkner won 20 titles on the Yarra River, including eight overall championships. To this day, no skier has exceeded her record haul of Moomba Masters victories.

In the early years of professional skiing in the United States, she also tasted success. At the 1976 California International Cup, she narrowly missed a clean sweep after falling in tricks to Florida’s Pam Folsom, but took the slalom, jump and overall titles.

Colin Faulkner slalom skiing

image: VINTAGE WATER SKI PHOTOS

Colin Faulkner

Confirmed professional titles (1965-1970): 4 . 1 Slalom, 1 Tricks, 1 jump, 1 overall

Completing the second husband-and-wife duo on this list, Colin Faulkner was a mainstay during the first decade of the Moomba Masters, winning jump in 1965, slalom and overall in 1967, and finally tricks in 1970.

It may be tempting to dismiss his achievements as coming at a far-flung tournament that was still in its fledgling years, but Faulkner’s victories came against visiting superstars such as Chuck Stearns, Mike Suyderhoud and Ricky McCormick throughout the late 1960s. They were no small feats.

Faulkner also set an unofficial world slalom record in 1966, before the IWWF kept official records, with two buoys at roughly 13 meters (32 off) and 61 kph (38 mph). It came in the last year before the men’s top speed was reduced to 58 kph (36 mph).

During this period, he also became the first Australian to win a World Championship medal, finishing runner-up in men’s slalom in both 1967 and 1969.

Margaret Calvert Australian Waterski Hall of Fame

Image: Waterski and Wakeboard Australia

Margaret Calvert

Confirmed professional titles (1963-1967): 10 — 2 slalom, 3 tricks, 3 jump, 2 overall

Margaret Calvert was the greatest champion of the early years of the Moomba Masters.

In 1965, she became the first, and to this day the only, woman to sweep the Moomba Masters, winning slalom, tricks and jump and, naturally, the overall title.

She came close to repeating the feat in 1967, again winning all three events, although the overall title ultimately went to South Africa’s Deidre Barnard under the scoring system used at the time.

A professional show skier who honed her craft at Surfers Paradise Ski Gardens, Calvert’s winning streak across the Moomba Masters and Australian Nationals during her short competitive career remains unmatched.

Colin Birmingham 1961 World Championships

image: VINTAGE WATER SKI PHOTOS

Colin Birmingham (1962)

Confirmed professional titles (1962): 4 . 1 Slalom, 1 Tricks, 1 jump, 1 overall

At the second edition of the Moomba Masters, Colin Birmingham became the first, and to this day the only, man to sweep a professional tournament.

Admittedly, Moomba was effectively a local derby in its first two years. It was not until 1963 that organizers managed to lure big names from abroad, including Hall of Famers Jimmy Jackson and Chuck Stearns.

But Birmingham was a mainstay of the Australian team from 1961 through 1967 and won four Australian titles. His sweep in Melbourne established the standard that every subsequent member of this club would strive to meet.

More than six decades later, Joel Poland has joined him.

Note: The records of professional wins from the last century are incomplete, and despite extensive research, some totals are almost certainly undercounts.

“It’s going to be an absolute slog,” Winter said.

“It’s Going to Go on Forever”: The 14-Month Grind Facing Skiers

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“It’s Going to Go on Forever”: The 14-Month Grind Facing Skiers

“It’s going to be an absolute slog,” Winter said.

Image: @tiaremirandaphotography 

By Jack Burden

For decades, professional water skiing followed a singular, repeatable rhythm.

There was the season. And there was the offseason.

The season was airports and jet lag and sunburn and adrenaline. The offseason was recovery. Time to let the body heal. Time to step away from the course. Time to remember, briefly, that life existed outside start docks, line lengths, and Zero Off settings.

That rhythm is gone now.

The 2027 World Championships in Mulwala, scheduled for February, have effectively turned the calendar into a never ending loop. Instead of a reset after the 2026 season, elite skiers are now staring down what Freddie Winter bluntly described as “two world years back to back.”

A competitive cycle stretched across continents and hemispheres has quietly produced something the sport has never really dealt with before at the elite level: a 14-month season.

The old model — peak in summer, recover in winter, rebuild in spring — no longer fits. Instead, skiers are being asked to maintain near-peak performance across an extended, continuous arc that runs through North America, Europe, and deep into the Southern Hemisphere summer, without ever fully shutting down.

Winter put it plainly on the TWBC podcast.

“The IWWF in their infinite wisdom has put the tournament in February less than 18 months after the previous one,” he said. “So we do have basically two world years back to back.”

Then, more tactically: “The season’s going to go on forever. We’re going to have to pull this year’s season into the following year because the last tour stop will be sometime in October or November and then two months later we’re going to be back at the World Championships on the other side of the world.”

On its own, a World Championships in an off-cycle year would be manageable. But the 2027 edition coincides with one of the busiest professional calendars in over two decades, with more titles up for grabs than in any season since 2000. The sheer density of events removes the clean psychological break that has always defined elite training cycles in the sport.

Winter’s framing keeps returning to the same place: not physical overload, but mental erosion.

“It’s going to be an absolute slog,” he said. “Mentally challenging.”

Across the elite field the physical demands are familiar. What changes here is duration. The ability to stay sharp, motivated, and emotionally engaged for more than a year without the usual offseason reset.

Which is why athletes are no longer talking about training and competing in the traditional sense. They are talking about serializing it.

“My goal is to be overall world champion in 2027,” said Louis Duplan-Fribourg. “So I’m like, okay, let’s go all in. Let’s make it happen.”

But even that “all in” is not a declaration of volume. It is a measured approach.

“We were just saying that yeah, I’m getting ready to ski for 14 months and not for 10 months as I’m usually doing,” he explained.

Then the practical reality: “You have to make choices. What tournament you’re doing, when you’re taking your days off, when you’re resting.”

That idea — making choices — has become the theme of this new era. Not every event can be treated as essential. Not every entry is worth the cost. The calendar no longer allows full participation without consequence.

Kennedy Hansen, one of 2025’s breakout stars, learnt this lesson the hard way after a marathon season.

“I didn’t really stop skiing,” she said, reflecting on her buildup to the 2026 season.

After choosing to compete at the 2026 Moomba Masters, she was forced into the same recalibration many athletes now face. It speaks to a sport where “offseason” has already begun to blur into continuity.

So her response has been to break the year apart deliberately, not as a single training block but as a series of managed pauses.

“I’m going to ski through the overall tournaments and all the Water Ski Pro Tour tournaments,” Hansen explained. “Then I think after that I’ll take a few weeks off, ski a little bit and then maybe take a few weeks off again.”

“But just try to spread it out so I’m not skiing the full year.”

Serialized training has become the new modus operandi. The offseason is no longer a season — it is something distributed across the calendar, inserted between events that are now too closely packed to allow for traditional recovery windows.

Winter himself plans to spend significant time training in Australia during the northern winter, hoping to avoid the traditional January reset where he admits he often returns needing to “lose a lot of weight,” rebuild strength, and rediscover timing on the water.

“What I don’t want to do,” he explained, “is start from zero.”

All of this is being shaped by a Southern Hemisphere stretch that, for younger athletes in particular, leaves almost no room for pause. January brings Under-21 Worlds in Peru. February brings the Open World Championships in Australia. March brings Moomba Masters. Three major events. Two countries. Two continents. One continuous competitive block.

For northern hemisphere athletes, this creates a challenge that has never really existed before: preparing for peak summer performance while physically located in winter, and then carrying that form across multiple continents without the usual reset.

It is also expensive. Winter has been open about the fact that Australian trips often become “money-losing” exercises once travel and accommodation are accounted for. Which, in a sport without deep prize purses, feeds back into decision-making about which events are even viable to attend.

“I’m probably not going to go to Moomba next year,” he admitted. “I’ll be so exhausted and mentally drained having gone through Christmas and not had any sort of an offseason.”

“I’m probably going to get Worlds done and then fly home and forget about water skiing for a few weeks.”

And there is an uncomfortable asymmetry running through all of this.

The 2027 Worlds will be only the third Open World Championships ever held in the Southern Hemisphere. The previous two — 1965 in Surfers Paradise and 2013 in Santiago — both still sat within late-autumn schedules, October and November respectively, that largely favored northern hemisphere preparation cycles. Even when hosted in the south, timing and structure meant northern calendars still defined the peak.

The hemisphere imbalance is not just theoretical. Only 2 World Championships (out of 39) have been held south of the Equator. Yet Southern Hemisphere athletes have won 22 world titles and over 10% of all medals — consistently competing at events timed more comfortably for their northern counterparts. Australia, despite hosting only once, sits fourth on the all-time Worlds medal table, ahead of countries like Italy and Great Britain, who have hosted far more frequently.

It is a quiet pattern in the sport: when the calendar bends, it usually bends toward the north.

There is a broader irony here. The sport is arguably healthier than it has been in years. More events, more depth, more visibility, more professional opportunity than at almost any point in its modern history.

“That’s also the beauty of it,” Duplan-Fribourg said. “Battles are going to be fierce every weekend.”

He is right.

But beauty in sport often comes with cost. And in this case, the cost is time — stretched, compressed, and redistributed until the idea of an offseason begins to dissolve entirely.

What remains is not a season in the traditional sense.

It is something longer, flatter, and more demanding. A calendar that does not reset so much as continue.

And for the first time at the elite level of water skiing, that continuity is not an advantage or an ambition.

It is the problem everyone is trying to solve.

Edit: corrected a typo in the number of countries

Matteo Luzzeri of Jolly Ski

Calendar Controversy: Why Europe’s Longest Running Pro Event Was Forced Out

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Calendar Controversy: Why Europe’s Longest Running Pro Event Was Forced Out

Matteo Luzzeri of Jolly Ski

Image: @waterski_nation

By Jack Burden

For more than a decade, the San Gervasio ProAm has acted as a kind of gravitational centre for European professional slalom skiing — a fixed point on the calendar around which other events quietly arranged themselves.

In 2026, it disappears.

Organizers confirmed this week that the San Gervasio ProAm — Europe’s longest-running active professional tournament — will not take place after the Italian Federation declined to sanction the event on its traditional July 3–5 weekend. That slot has instead been awarded to the inaugural Recetto ProAm, a new tournament at the site of the 2025 World Championships.

The decision abruptly halts one of the sport’s most stable modern traditions.

First held in 2014, San Gervasio has staged 11 editions, distributed more than $200,000 in prize money, and attracted the world’s best slalom skiers each summer. Only the pandemic-disrupted 2020 season broke its run.

In a European landscape where professional tournaments often appear and disappear within a few seasons, its longevity has become unusual. The next closest active event — the Botaski ProAm — has staged six elite-level editions since 2018.

For founder and organizer Matteo Luzzeri, the cancellation ultimately came down to a single issue: dates.

“We were informed by the Italian Federation that we could not organize the San Gervasio Pro Am on our traditional weekend of 3–5 July,” he said in a statement released by Jolly Ski. “We evaluated alternative dates, but none would have ensured proper participation from professional and amateur skiers alike.”

The federation offered July 10–12 instead — a solution Luzzeri says was unworkable due to clashes with several European national championships.

“Amateur participation is not an add-on,” he said. “It is a core pillar of the ProAm format — for the atmosphere, and for the financial sustainability of the event.”

A crowded July

Ironically, the dispute emerged during what initially looked like a sign of strength for Italian water skiing.

Early versions of the 2026 calendar showed three professional tournaments scheduled within nine days: San Gervasio on July 3–5, the PKB ProAm in Ivrea shortly after, and the new Recetto ProAm the following weekend.

For traveling athletes, it promised a lucrative European tour block.

“It’s unbelievable,” Luzzeri exclaimed on the TWBC podcast in February, when the sequence still appeared intact. “To have three tournaments in Italy, on top of everything else happening in Europe — it speaks to the quality of organization here.”

But the excitement did not last.

Records show San Gervasio applied for the July 3–5 dates first. Recetto subsequently submitted an application for July 10–12 before later modifying its request to the same early-July weekend.

“We were asked over the phone to renounce our date because of a conflict with a WWS event on July 10–11,” he said. Recetto’s organizers hoped to expand their event beyond slalom to include trick and jump, potentially overlapping with the WWS Overall Tour’s Granite Cup in New Hampshire.

The proposed solution was straightforward in the Federation’s mind: San Gervasio would move.

Luzzeri declined.

“We explained that July 10–12 would not work for us due to conflicts with amateur competitions and chose to stand by our original date.”

Without federation sanction, however, the event could not proceed.

Who really runs the calendar?

The episode highlights the complicated governance structure of professional water skiing.

While San Gervasio was part of the IWWF-affiliated Waterski Pro Tour, which gives priority to existing events, the authority to sanction competitions ultimately rests with national federations.

“The Pro Tour can decide whether to include an event,” Luzzeri said. “But first the tournament must be sanctioned by the national federation.”

In practice, this means the Pro Tour can shape rankings and visibility — but not guarantee that an event takes place.

The situation also raises a more delicate structural question.

The Recetto venue is operated by FISSW Servizi, a non-profit organization wholly owned by the Italian Federation — the same body responsible for approving the national calendar.

In Luzzeri’s view, that dual role created an uneven playing field.

“The main issue revolves around FISSW being the organizer of a Pro Tournament and at the same time the entity that approves events,” he said. “They enacted a power grab by sidelining us and forcefully grabbing our date.”

Tradition versus scale

Not everyone will interpret the decision the same way.

San Gervasio offers history and consistency. Recetto is expected to offer scale — more than doubling the available prize money by matching San Gervasio’s slalom purse and adding roughly $30,000 across trick and jump divisions.

In a crowded calendar, there is a reasonable argument to be made that larger multi-event competitions deserve priority.

Yet the broader context suggests a deeper structural tension.

In 2026, elite tournaments will operate across three separate circuits: the Waterski Pro Tour, the WWS Overall Tour, and the new Nautique Water Ski World Series. Each creates opportunity — and scheduling friction.

At one point this winter, a provisional schedule showed as many as 12 professional events worldwide, nine of them in Europe or Africa, packed into roughly six weeks across June and July.

Fellow organizer Francisco Rodrigues, whose Portugal Pro will also sit out the 2026 season, believes the sport may be reaching a breaking point.

“It makes absolutely no sense to have three professional tours in a shrinking sport,” he wrote online. “Sooner or later the calendar will become a nightmare for organizers — and especially for the athletes.”

It is a striking warning — yet one that feels almost unthinkable when viewed through the lens of where professional skiing was a decade ago.

There is a popular narrative that San Gervasio “brought professional skiing back to Europe.” That is slightly romanticized. When the event debuted in 2014, it was one of four professional tournaments on the continent that year — though notably the only one featuring slalom.

Still, its timing mattered.

The early 2010s were a fragile period for European pro skiing, with limited prize money and only sporadic elite events. San Gervasio did not revive the circuit on its own — but it helped stabilize it. Over the next decade, more competitions filled the calendar around it.

In a sense, the current conflict is a by-product of that very growth.

A pause — not an ending

For Luzzeri, the impact is both logistical and personal.

Much of the preparation for 2026 had already been completed.

“Most of it,” he said. “Sponsors were largely secured. Skiers were already asking about entries. We had even declined ski-school bookings for that period.”

The goal now is recovery.

“Our priority is to create the conditions for a proper return in 2027.”

For an event that became a fixture of the European summer, the hope is that this year’s absence proves temporary.

But the questions raised by its cancellation are likely to linger.

As professional water skiing expands — and fragments — who ultimately decides where, and when, the sport’s biggest stages are built?

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the Botaski ProAm had staged five editions. It has, in fact, held six editions with elite status, along with several additional years featuring Big Dawg cash-prize competition.

Ready for the first pro tournament of the season

After a Lost Year, Martin Labra’s Long Road Leads Back to Moomba

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After a Lost Year, Martin Labra’s Long Road Leads Back to Moomba

Ready for the first pro tournament of the season

Image: @tiaremirandaphotography

By Jack Burden

For the past 12 months, Martin Labra’s world shrank to rehab rooms, gym sessions, and the distant whine of boats he could hear—but not chase—on the lake outside his home. Next week in Melbourne, the Chilean phenom finally gets it back.

After a knee injury forced him out of competition in early 2025, Labra has quietly rebuilt his form across record tournaments in Chile, posting multiple scores back over 12,000 points, including an equal personal best of 12,590 — the highest trick score recorded anywhere this year. Now the 19-year-old returns to the professional stage at the Moomba Masters, entered in both tricks and slalom and slated to appear earlier in the week in the event’s inaugural Under-21 competition.

It is a compelling return for one of the sport’s most promising young athletes, with the coliseum-like atmosphere of the Yarra River providing a potentially blockbuster backdrop for Labra’s comeback arc.

Labra had been a name to watch for several years — the most decorated skier in the history of the Under-17 World Championships, his four gold medals unmatched on the men’s side. But in 2024 he truly announced himself to the water ski world with a breakout season. Labra captured his first professional title at the U.S. Masters, then added another at the Botaski ProAm later that summer.

It wasn’t just the hardware. It was the composure — the unusual calm of a teenager skiing with the tactical patience of a veteran. Trick specialists took notice when Labra unveiled a new trick live in professional competition and reset benchmarks for the highest-scoring toe pass, pushing himself into the rarefied 12,500-point club and into quiet world-record conversations.

Speaking last July on the Chilean podcast Escala del 1 al 10, Labra described the Masters victory as one of the defining moments of his life.

“The Masters was a very, very beautiful moment and something I’ll never forget, I think, for the rest of my life,” he said.

But Labra is not a one-discipline curiosity. While tricks remain his professional calling card, his rapid rise in jump and overall — where he ranked sixth in the world pre-injury — signaled broader ambitions. He closed his 2024 campaign with two finals appearances on the WWS Overall Tour, the résumé of an athlete expanding faster than most expected.

Then the trajectory snapped.

This time last year, Labra was riding the momentum of his breakout season. The calendar ahead was crowded: multiple professional stops, an Under-21 World Championships where he entered as favorite in both jump and overall, and his first Open World Championships with a credible shot at the title.

What followed was a familiar but still brutal reminder of elite sport’s fragility.

In training the week before the 2025 Moomba Masters, Labra’s season unraveled in an instant.

“It happened on February 27th… I fell jumping… my knee went inwards and I tore my cruciate ligament,” he said. “Definitely one of the hardest moments, I think, in my sporting career.”

The timing made it sting more.

“I think it hit me very hard, coming from such a good year as 2024,” Labra admitted.

Surgery followed. Then the long, quiet work of return.

Physically, the roadmap was straightforward. Mentally, it was not.

“I live by the lake, I hear the boats all day long,” Labra said. “Not being able to go to the lake… was getting me down, because I love being at the lake. I love this world and the lake life.”

In the early weeks after surgery, he relocated north to, in his words, “clear my head a little from all the bad things I was going through.” The reset helped. So did the infrastructure around him.

Few athletes are better resourced for rehabilitation. His father is a physical therapist who guided the early recovery phases. His mother, a Chilean representative and Pan American Games field hockey medalist, understands elite-sport pressure. And his stepfather — trailblazing Chilean professional jumper Rodrigo Miranda — knows exactly what it takes to rebuild a body and a season.

“Paso a paso,” Miranda posted — step by step. A mantra that has quietly defined Labra’s year.

For all the physical rebuilding, the more revealing work has been internal. Labra repeatedly circles back to the influence of his family in keeping his rapid rise in perspective.

“My family… that support I have from them is unconditional,” he said. “That’s what helps me stay grounded… because in the end, I’m just an ordinary person.”

The injury also created something elite athletes rarely get: time to recalibrate. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Labra had already chosen to remain in Chile rather than enter the U.S. collegiate system — a decision that, in hindsight, gave him unusual flexibility during rehabilitation.

“I think… being able to do your sport at high performance and study at a very good university, it was the best decision I could have made,” he said.

With competition temporarily removed, Labra leaned into structure. Gym sessions multiplied. University life became a second arena of focus. The routine, he admits, was not accidental.

“Now I try… to focus on recovery, on the gym, on studying,” he said. “I feel like I’ve also improved outside of it.”

There is a quiet maturity in how he frames the lost season — not as empty time, but as reclaimed margin.

“I’m taking advantage of this injury to do well with university,” Labra said. “If I had been competing, I could have traveled more and had less time… but now I can stay more up to date and get to know my friends and classmates better.”

That perspective was not formed in isolation. Labra points back to 2022 — a season that fell short of his own expectations — as an earlier inflection point.

“I think those were the most difficult moments of my career,” he said of that year’s struggles.

What followed was a deeper investment in the mental side of performance, including ongoing work with a sports psychologist, who remains part of Labra’s inner circle.

“He’s helped me a lot… especially in these difficult times,” Labra said.

If there is a defining thread in Labra’s young career, it may be an unusual comfort with the uncomfortable — the moments where momentum stalls and most athletes tighten.

“I love being under pressure,” he said. “The more pressure, the better for me.”

Melbourne will test that claim immediately.

His comeback event features one of the deepest men’s trick fields assembled: reigning world champion Matias Gonzalez, world record holder and defending Moomba champion Jake Abelson, former world champions Patricio Font and Dorien Llewellyn, plus the ever-dangerous Joel Poland.

There will be no gentle runway back.

Early signs out of Chile have been quietly encouraging — not just flashes of the old Labra, but a slightly more measured version. Training alongside the sport’s elite at the now-informal “trick camp,” he has worked methodically toward peak form.

As recently as November, his public tone was cautious: “Slowly getting back to it…”

Now the scores — and the body language — point toward readiness.

Even so, Labra frames the comeback with characteristic restraint. Asked what advice he would offer athletes facing setbacks, his answer was simple: “That first step is always the hardest. If you can’t do it alone, you look for help… lean on the people who love you.”

Moomba will not fully define Martin Labra’s return. Not yet.

A year on from the injury that stalled his momentum, Labra arrives in Melbourne with something simpler in mind: competing again.

And if his own words are any guide, he is exactly where he wants to be.

“I enjoy the nerves,” he said. “I know how to use them.”

Waterski Predictor

Waterski Predictor: Future or Fantasy?

Articles

Waterski Predictor: Future or Fantasy?

Waterski Predictor

Matching Waterski Predictor’s AI energy with our own glitchy digital divide (image: Nano Banana Pro)

By Jack Burden

Every few years, someone tries to fix water skiing.

Not with a new fin setting or a better beveled edge, but with an idea that promises something bigger: relevance, engagement, growth. A way to make people care again, or care more, about a sport that for all its beauty and difficulty has never quite figured out how to keep casual fans engaged.

This week, Waterski Predictor entered that lineage.

Launched in beta with slick AI-generated promos and a tagline that flirts unapologetically with existential dread (“Imagine a world without waterskiing”), the platform positions itself as a fantasy-style prediction game layered over professional events. Fans sign up, receive tokens, predict outcomes, and, if they’re right often enough, redeem rewards like ski gear, coaching, or experiences. No cash payouts. No betting slips. At least on paper, firmly on the safe side of legality.

The pitch is familiar, even compelling: sports grow when fans don’t just watch, they participate.

It’s hard to argue with that. Fantasy leagues transformed how millions consume football, basketball, and Formula One. Prediction games give meaning to mid-pack finishes, to heats that don’t involve the favorite, to the long, quiet stretches of a tournament day when only diehards usually stay tuned. In a sport like water skiing, where storylines are rich but exposure is thin, that extra layer of attention matters.

But water skiing is not football. And participation is not a neutral word anymore.

Almost immediately, the reaction split along predictable lines. Some laughed. Some cringed. Some signed up. Some recoiled at the whiff of gambling culture drifting into a sport that still prides itself on junior development, family lake days, and hand-me-down skis.

“Gambling will solve all our problems,” former Under-21 world champion Sean Hunter deadpanned on Instagram.

Others pushed back more earnestly. Loving skiing, they argued, should be enough. Turning outcomes into tokens felt unnecessary, even vaguely dystopian, especially when paired with a launch video that framed the app as a savior rather than a supplement.

To Waterski Predictor’s credit, their responses were measured. This isn’t meant for everyone. It’s optional. Think fantasy sports, not gambling.

That distinction matters. Legally, it matters a lot. As John Horton explained on a BallOfSpray forum following the launch, drawing on his own deep dive into the regulatory minefield, once cash enters the equation things get illegal fast. Tokens redeemable for prizes may be the only viable path for something like this to exist at all. In that sense, Waterski Predictor isn’t flirting with gambling so much as carefully stepping around it.

Still, perception lags legality.

The language of tokens, exchanges, and rewards carries cultural baggage now, whether the creators intend it or not. Crypto-bro excess, predatory betting apps, and the broader gamification of everything have left many people understandably wary. Water skiing, a sport already fighting to explain itself to the outside world, doesn’t need another thing that looks confusing or ethically murky at first glance.

And yet.

Scroll past the skepticism and you see something else: people laughing at the promo. Inside jokes landing. Fans debating formats. Old-timers recalling fantasy leagues from 25 years ago that handed out hats and T-shirts and somehow survived without ruining anyone’s soul. Curiosity, not just outrage.

You also see something water skiing rarely gets: conversation.

Not about federations or politics or declining participation numbers, but about pro events themselves. Who will win. Who might surprise. Which pass actually matters. That attention, fragile and fleeting, is the currency the sport has often lacked.

The deeper question, then, isn’t whether Waterski Predictor is good or bad. It’s whether water skiing can afford to be precious.

This is a sport that struggles to monetize viewership, to retain fans between rounds, to offer athletes sustainable careers. Anything that keeps eyes on the screen longer has value, even if it makes us uncomfortable at first. Growth rarely arrives in forms that feel pure.

At the same time, the discomfort shouldn’t be dismissed. Transparency matters. So does tone. Launching with apocalyptic framing that suggests this saves the sport invites backlash in a community that has seen enough silver bullets misfire. Water skiing doesn’t need salvation. It needs infrastructure, trust, and incremental wins.

Waterski Predictor could be one of those wins, if it knows what it is.

Not a replacement for loving the sport. Not a financial engine. Not a moral crusade. Just a thin, optional layer that gives fans another reason to stay through the last round instead of checking results later.

That, more than tokens or AI videos, may be the point.

Water skiing has never suffered from a lack of passion. It has suffered from a lack of experiments. Some fail. Some quietly help. Most sit somewhere in between, nudging the sport forward by inches rather than saving it outright.

Waterski Predictor probably won’t change everything. It might not even last. But it asks a question worth asking in 2026: how do we invite people not just to watch water skiing, but to care what happens next?

The answer, as always in this sport, will be complicated. That much you can bet on.

Year in review: We countdown the most memorable moments of the 2025 water ski season

Year in Review: We Countdown the Most Memorable Moments of 2025

Articles

Year in review: We countdown the most memorable moments of the 2025 water ski season

Year in review: We countdown the most memorable moments of the 2025 water ski season

The moments that defined the 2025 water ski season – and the stories behind them.

By Jack Burden

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.

Dominic Kuhn tricks at the 2025 University Worlds

Image: Joshua Devenie

10. Austria Takes Auckland

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.

World record holder Jake Abelson

Image: Johnny Hayward

9. The Race to 13k

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.

The barrier fell. The chase went on.

Jon Travers slaloms at the 2025 Travers Grand Prix

Image: Bret Ellis

8. Travers Finale Shatters All Records

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.

@danielaverswyvelg of Colombia during the women’s trick during the IWWF U21 waterski championships at Predator Bay waterski club in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Image: Johnny Hayward

7. Controversial Calls in Calgary

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 Victorian Water Ski Association proudly presents the BIGGEST & BEST Waterski Tournament in the world

Image: Moomba Masters

6. The Moomba That Launched a New Generation

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.

Charlie Ross slaloms at the 2025 World Championships

Image: Johnny Hayward

5. Ross and Smith Runoff for the Crown

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.

The rivalry that defined the season: Neilly Ross vs. Erika Lang

Images: Thomas Gustafson

4. Lang vs. Ross Takes Tricking to the Next Level

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.

@teamcanski world overall champion @dorienllewellyn during the 2025 IWWF World Waterski Championships at Parco Nautico del Sesia in Novara, Italy.

Image: Johnny Hayward

3. The Overall Saga

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.

Freddie Winter 🏆MASTERS SLALOM CHAMPION 🏆

Image: Bret Ellis

2. Winter Returns; Cooler than Ever

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.

@joelpoland jumps during the 2025 IWWF World Waterski Championships at Parco Nautico del Sesia in Novara, Italy.

Image: Johnny Hayward

1. Jump Fest in Recetto

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.

Tim Wild and Matt Rini at the 2025 Jr. Masters

Nautique Flips Decades of Tradition at Flagship Junior Events

Articles

Nautique flips decades of tradition at flagship junior events

Tim Wild and Matt Rini at the 2025 Jr. Masters

Nautique announced that the under-17 division will be sunset at the Masters next year (image: @bearwitnesssportsphotos.)

By Jack Burden

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 Multiverse

Inside the Water Ski Multiverse: Nautique’s Power Play Begins

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Inside the Water Ski Multiverse: Nautique’s Power Play Begins

Welcome to the Multiverse

A sport cut down the middle.

By Jack Burden

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.

Joel Poland of Great Britain is consoled by friend Edoardo Marenzi of Italy after Poland fell early in his trick run during the 2025 IWWF World Waterski Championships at Parco Nautico del Sesia in Novara, Italy.

The Unsolvable Puzzle of Joel Poland at the World Championships

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The unsolvable puzzle of Joel Poland at the World Championships

Joel Poland of Great Britain is consoled by friend Edoardo Marenzi of Italy after Poland fell early in his trick run during the 2025 IWWF World Waterski Championships at Parco Nautico del Sesia in Novara, Italy.

Image: @bearwitnesssportsphotos

By Jack Burden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except, it seems, at the World Championships.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Axel Garcia tricks during the IWWF U21 waterski championships at Predator Bay waterski club in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Axel Garcia: The King of the Half Jack

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Axel Garcia: The King of the Half Jack

Axel Garcia tricks during the IWWF U21 waterski championships at Predator Bay waterski club in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Axel Garcia tricks during the IWWF U21 waterski championships (image: @bearwitnesssportsphotos)

By Jack Burden

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.

Garcia’s skillset is a case study in a long-running debate: whether the IWWF’s trick scoring table needs an overhaul.

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.