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.
A world-class field and razor-thin margins defined the 2026 Swiss Pro Slalom at Swiss Waterski Resort, where Charlie Ross and Regina Jaquess emerged victorious after a day of high-pressure, shortline battles.
Men’s: Ross Edges Smith in 9.75m Shootout
For the first time since 2018, 10.25 was ran at the Swiss Pro Slalom and not just once. Charlie Ross, Freddie Winter and Nate Smith all ran 10.25m and set up a final where all top three skiers had already reached 1.00 @ 9.75m earlier in the tournament.
That unprecedented depth carried into the final, where execution at 9.75m would decide everything.
Last off the dock, Ross rose to the moment with 1.00 @ 9.75m, edging Nate Smith, who scored 0.50 @ 9.75m. Freddie Winter—also part of the 9.75m club during the event—rounded out the podium.
Final – Top 8
Charlie Ross – 1.00 @ 9.75m
Nate Smith – 0.50 @ 9.75m
Freddie Winter – 5.00 @ 10.25m
Dane Mechler – 3.00 @ 10.25m
Will Asher – 3.00 @ 10.25m
Stephen Neveu – 3.00 @ 10.25m
Jonathan Travers – 2.00 @ 10.25m
Robert Hazelwood – 1.50 @ 10.25m
With athletes capable of scoring at the shortest line, the final became a pure pressure test—and Ross delivered the winning edge when it mattered most.
Women’s: Jaquess Claims Historic 11th Title
On the women’s side, Regina Jaquess added yet another chapter to her legacy, capturing her 11th Swiss Pro Slalom title.
Jaquess stood alone in the final as the only skier to score into 10.25m, winning with 1.50 @ 10.25m and separating herself from a tightly packed field at 10.75m.
Canada’s Jaimee Bull finished second with 4.00 @ 10.75m, while Allie Nicholson took third with 3.00 @ 10.75m.
Final – Top 6
Regina Jaquess – 1.50 @ 10.25m
Jaimee Bull – 4.00 @ 10.75m
Allie Nicholson – 3.00 @ 10.75m
Neilly Ross – 2.00 @ 10.75m
Alexandra Garcia – 2.00 @ 10.75m
Elizabeth Montavon – 1.50 @ 10.75m
In a tightly contested field, Jaquess’s move into 10.25m gave her the early edge to open the season—but with Jaimee Bull coming off multiple dominant years on tour, the battle at the top is far from settled.
Check out the official one hour highlights episode of finals day from the 65th Nautique Moomba Masters International Invitational presented by GM Marine soon to broadcast on Foxtel and Sky TV New Zealand in the coming weeks
Someone spent the winter visualizing a new gate. Someone found ten extra feet in the gym. Someone swears the new ski is different this time. Spring in central Florida is built on these small acts of faith.
Most years, April offers hints.
This year, it has offered a warning.
In the space of barely ten days, central Florida has produced pending world records in men’s tricks, women’s tricks, men’s overall, U21 men’s slalom, and U17 girls’ slalom. It has produced a trick skier who seems to have decided that 12,000 points is now simply his normal operating temperature. It has produced a women’s trick field where 10,000 points no longer feels like a headline, just the price of admission.
The sport has not eased into 2026. It has kicked the door off its hinges.
Trick skiing has entered its arms race phase
The loudest noise came first at Swiss Pro Tricks.
At times over the last decade, women’s trick skiing has felt like Erika Lang’s private territory, the kind of dominance that makes everyone else look like they’re playing a slightly different sport. In Clermont, she reminded everyone of that again, posting 11,610 points—a pending world record and her fourth consecutive Swiss Pro Tricks title.
“As if four consecutive titles weren’t enough,” the Waterski Pro Tour posted, “she also set a pending world record with 11,610 points.”
Normally, that would have been the week’s definitive women’s story. But Neilly Ross refused to leave it there.
At Swiss Pro Tricks, Ross ran three identical scores of 10,550—three rounds that were, by her own reckoning, a split-second timing decision away from 11,300. Days later at the Sunset Lakes EyeTrick Invitational, she removed the ambiguity entirely: 11,480 points, another pending world record if Lang’s is not approved.
“Beyond excited to put up this score especially this early in the season,” Ross wrote afterward, “and I can’t wait to try to keep pushing.”
That last part should concern everyone else.
Because behind Lang and Ross, the floor is rising too. Kennedy Hansen broke through with a personal best of 10,170. Alexia Abelson pushed to 9,490 at Swiss Pro Tricks and 9,740 at Ski Fluid, while also tying the U17 world slalom record with 3 at 10.75m (39.5 off).
Jake Abelson is making 12,000 look boring
The most dangerous sentence in trick skiing right now might be this: Jake Abelson scored another 12,000.
Because that sentence no longer surprises anyone.
At Swiss Pro Tricks, there were ten men’s scores over 12,000 points, with Abelson and Martin Labra both tricking over 12k in three consecutive rounds. Matias Gonzalez won with 12,860—a pro tournament record and his third straight Swiss Pro Tricks title—but even there, the larger story was the density of excellence.
The ceiling wasn’t just rising. The whole room was.
Then Abelson kept going.
At Sunset Lakes, he tricked over 12,000 again—four consecutive rounds. Then at the Ski Fluid Classic, he went 13,270, a pending men’s world record that eclipsed the current 13,020 mark and leapfrogged Gonzalez’s own pending 13,240 from earlier this season.
Ten consecutive rounds over 12,000 points in eight days.
That number deserves to be read twice.
For years, 12,000 was the frontier, the score that separated contenders from theorists. Abelson has turned it into background noise. He is not chasing the edge anymore; he is moving it.
And the terrifying part for everyone else is that this doesn’t look like a hot streak. It looks like a new baseline.
Joel Poland may have ended the overall conversation
World overall records are usually acts of patience.
A buoy here. Forty trick points there. Half a meter in jump after six months of trying. The record tends to move by inches because it has to—three events leave very little room for dramatic leaps.
Joel Poland ignored all of that.
At Ski Fluid Classic, he put together the kind of round overall skiers spend entire careers imagining: 3 at 10.25m (41 off), 12,160 trick points, and 71.4 meters (234 feet) in jump.
A pending world overall record. If approved, his ninth.
But more than that, it felt like a declaration.
After years of incremental improvement, Poland didn’t inch the mark forward—he leaped over it. This was not survival overalling, scraping enough in one event to support brilliance in another. This was near-best-level skiing in all three disciplines at once.
“I’ve been chasing a record like this for years,” Poland wrote. “3 huge scores in the same round. Feels absolutely insane.”
It should.
Because this is the kind of record that changes the psychology of a discipline. It doesn’t just set the standard; it makes everyone else recalculate what is even realistic.
For the rest of the current men’s overall field, the target may now feel less like a record and more like a distant weather system.
The Ross family is apparently not interested in moderation
While Joel was rewriting overall math and Jake was redrawing trick boundaries, Charlie Ross quietly produced one of the scariest slalom tournaments of the year.
At April Turns on Lake Ledbetter, he ran 2 at 9.75m (43 off), a pending U21 world record and Open Canadian record. More ominously, he ran 10.25m (41 off) in three consecutive rounds and looked, by his own admission, like he left more out there.
“Felt close to WR… 👀”
That emoji may be the most threatening punctuation of the spring.
Because 43 off is never an accident. Repeating 41 off is even less so. This wasn’t one miracle pass. It was the profile of a skier who has moved into a different category.
And in a family already producing world records through Neilly, it feels almost unfair.
Florida has always been full of talented ski families. Some seasons, though, one family starts to feel like its own federation.
A season that already feels too big for April
Sports are at their best when records stop feeling exceptional.
Not because records matter less, but because expectations change. The audience recalibrates. Athletes recalibrate. What looked impossible six months ago becomes the thing you’re annoyed not to see.
That is where water skiing seems to be heading.
Women’s trick is becoming a record race. Men’s trick is turning into a weekly escalation. Overall may have just been blown open by one absurd round. Slalom’s next generation is running 41 off and hinting that it should have been more.
Usually, April is for possibility. This year, April has looked like prophecy.
There will be bad weekends. There will be missed gates, edges caught, tailwinds, and all the usual reminders that water skiing remains gloriously unreasonable. Not every pending record will survive paperwork and video review.
But that almost misses the point.
The point is that the sport already feels faster, higher, and less polite. The point is that ten days in central Florida made the rest of the 2026 season feel like required viewing.
And if this is what spring looks like, summer might get ridiculous.
In a move that signals growing momentum behind its renewed push into tournament water skiing, Malibu Boats has re-signed British slalom legend Will Asher to its athlete team.
Announcing the partnership on Instagram, Malibu wrote: “The legend returns. We’re fired up to welcome Will Asher back to the Malibu team… Good to have you back where you belong.”
For Malibu, the signing represents more than a nostalgic reunion. It marks the company’s first confirmed athlete sponsorship after a turbulent period that saw long-time stars Regina Jaquess and Thomas Degasperi depart for rival Nautique, fueling speculation the Tennessee-based manufacturer was retreating from tournament skiing altogether.
Those fears have been put to bed in recent months. Malibu secured the coveted towboat contract from the International Waterski & Wakeboard Federation beginning in 2026 — a landmark agreement that places its Response TXi at the center of world-titled competition. Re-signing Asher now adds a human face to that corporate resurgence.
At 43, Asher remains one of the sport’s defining competitors. A two-time world champion and four-time year-end No. 1, he has amassed 39 professional victories and more slalom podium finishes this century than any of his peers, trailing only Nate Smith in total men’s slalom titles. His late career victories on the Waterski Pro Tour in 2022 and 2024 reaffirmed his enduring competitiveness.
Yet the Brit enters this new chapter after a comparatively lean 2025 season, managing three professional podiums without a victory — though he still claimed bronze at the World Championships. Even so, few doubt his continued relevance at the elite level.
From an industry perspective, the signing also reshapes the athlete-sponsorship landscape. Nautique currently boasts a deep roster of eight skiers, while MasterCraft supports six. Until Asher’s return, Malibu had none.
Whether this marks the beginning of a broader recruitment drive remains unclear. But for a brand recently accused of abandoning the sport, bringing back one of slalom’s most decorated figures feels like a deliberate statement.
Malibu is not just towing world championships — it is once again investing in the athletes who define them.
MELBOURNE, Australia — If the Yarra River has taught the sport anything over the past seven decades, it’s that reputation counts for very little once the rope tightens.
World champions have fallen here. Record holders have vanished into the current. Entire weekends can unravel in the space of a mistimed turn or a half-second of hesitation.
And yet, somehow, the 2026 Moomba Masters still managed to feel both chaotic and strangely inevitable at the same time.
Because despite the notorious conditions — the current, the chop, the setups, the thousands of spectators leaning over the banks — this was a year when, more often than not, the best skier still won. In four of the six disciplines, the champion was either the current or pending world record holder. Personal bests ruled the podiums.
The cream, as they say, rose.
But Moomba still made them work for it.
And it did so in front of one of the largest crowds the event has ever seen. Announcer Jarrod Faoro, who has called more than his share of Moomba finals, described Sunday evening’s audience as the biggest he had ever seen here — a sea of people packed along the banks.
Melbourne was already swelling. Formula 1 was running across town at Albert Park. Nearly 100,000 fans were headed for the AFL opener at the nearby MCG. The city was buzzing.
And tucked in the middle of it all, water skiing quietly produced one of its most compelling weekends in years.
If there was a single storyline threading through the entire weekend, it might have been the emergence of Jake Abelson.
For years, Joel Poland has occupied a unique place in the sport — a rare athlete capable of challenging the world’s best across all three events. The kind of skier whose overall scores force people to reconsider what’s possible.
Now there may be another.
Abelson arrived in Melbourne already holding the world record in tricks. That part was never in doubt. But over the course of the weekend, the 18-year-old American produced the kind of all-around performance that forces people to start whispering bigger questions.
He qualified for the finals in all three events on Moomba Monday. He launched the first 200-foot jump of his career earlier in the week. He won the Saturday night jump under lights.
And he looked increasingly comfortable doing all of it.
At the same age, Abelson’s overall scores already sit well ahead of where Poland once was. His tricking is elite. His jump is already world-class.
The missing piece — as it always is in overall skiing — remains slalom.
But if Abelson can close that gap, the sport may be watching the arrival of another genuine triple-threat.
Tricks: The Most Anticipated Finals
Moomba Monday traditionally begins with tricks, and in 2026 the event had been hyped all week as the must-watch discipline.
Both trick fields were absurdly deep. The men’s preliminaries had already produced six scores above 11,000. The women’s field featured the sport’s fiercest rivalry of the past year.
It did not disappoint.
Kennedy Hansen opened the final like someone determined to silence any doubts.
The American was arguably the breakout skier of 2025 — winner of the WWS Overall Tour, the newest member of the 10,000-point club, and runner-up at the World Championships. On the Yarra she delivered two composed passes to set the early benchmark above 9,000 points.
But the real battle was always expected to come from the sport’s hottest rivalry: Neilly Ross vs. Erika Lang.
Ross, the reigning world champion, began with a powerful toe pass that hinted at a huge score. But a momentary loss of rhythm cost her dearly on hands — nearly a thousand points slipping away between time and judging deductions.
That left the door open.
And Erika Lang has spent most of the last decade walking through doors like that.
The American produced two blistering passes to score 10,930 points, winning her fourth consecutive and eighth overall Moomba Masters trick title. The victory moves her to second on the all-time trick titles list, now just one win behind Moomba legend Karen Bowkett Neville.
Lang didn’t just win.
She cleared second place by 1,300 points.
If the women’s final delivered tension, the men’s event produced pure spectacle.
Jake Abelson set the early pace with a score just over 12,000 points, despite an equipment issue that cost him a final toe trick and a hand pass that ran a fraction too long.
Even with those lost points, the score looked strong.
Then Matias Gonzalez happened.
The 18-year-old Chilean had arrived in Melbourne a week removed from setting a pending world record. His early rounds had been relatively quiet — even finishing third in the Under-21 event.
But in the professional final, he delivered something extraordinary.
Two impossibly fast passes. No wasted motion. No theatrics.
Just speed.
Gonzalez’s skiing isn’t built on the boundary-pushing flips of Joel Poland, the inventive toe work of Martin Labra, or the technical complexity of Abelson and Patricio Font.
Instead, he performs classic sequences at speeds that once seemed impossible.
His run looked like someone had pressed fast-forward on the tape.
The result: 12,860 points, the highest score ever recorded in a professional tournament and a new Moomba course record.
The remaining contenders — Poland, Labra, and Font — all needed personal bests to catch him.
None could.
Gonzalez skied away with his first Moomba Masters title.
Slalom: Folk Heroes and Familiar Winners
If Jake’s performance felt like a breakthrough, his younger sister Alexia quietly produced one of the most remarkable stories of the finals.
Just days removed from winning Most Outstanding Junior Performance earlier in the week, the 15-year-old American lined up for the women’s slalom final — only the third professional slalom tournament of her career.
Few expected what came next.
Abelson built momentum through the 11.25m (38′ off) pass with growing confidence, turning buoy after buoy with the kind of rhythm that suggests a skier momentarily forgetting where they are.
For a moment, it looked like she might run 11m for the first time.
Instead, she fell around five ball — half a buoy shy of her personal best — leaving her somewhere between joy, disbelief, and frustration as she floated away smiling.
Then the chaos began.
Neilly Ross missed. Australia’s Sade Ferguson faltered. One by one, the field fell short.
Suddenly Abelson found herself climbing the leaderboard until only one skier remained: world record holder Regina Jaquess.
Jaquess did what Jaquess usually does. She navigated into 10.75m to secure her second Moomba slalom title.
But the real surprise was just behind her.
A 15-year-old with a grin that suggested she was still trying to process what had just happened.
Slalom on the Yarra has a habit of producing unlikely protagonists.
This year’s belonged to Corey Saddington.
Ranked 82nd in the world, the 23-year-old from Bendigo barely made the final, sneaking through the repechage on Sunday afternoon.
Then he opened the finals by running 11.25m and pushing into 10.75m (39.5′ off), finishing within a buoy of his personal best.
And then he waited.
Five consecutive skiers — all with far better rankings and deeper personal bests — failed to match him as the current ripped through the course.
For a moment, the unthinkable felt possible.
Freddie Winter eventually edged past by a single buoy. Thomas Degasperi matched the mark.
Then defending champion Charlie Ross arrived.
The 20-year-old Canadian skied like he was in different water entirely — smooth, controlled, unhurried.
Ross rounded four buoys at 10.75m to claim back-to-back Moomba titles.
Saddington, meanwhile, finished fourth — and became the weekend’s most unlikely folk hero.
Jump: New Champions, Familiar Power
The women’s jump event still feels slightly strange without Jacinta Carroll towering over the field.
For more than a decade the Australian legend owned the Yarra. Now the event is learning how to exist without her.
But if there was ever concern about the future, the Australian pipeline offered reassurance. Young jumpers like Sade Ferguson, Kristy Appleton, and Zarhli Reeves carried forward a lineage stretching from Sue Lipplegoes to Emma Sheers to Carroll herself.
The podium, however, belonged to the Americans.
Regina Jaquess set the early benchmark with 51.9m (170 ft) — longer than last year’s winning jump.
Then Aliaksandra Danisheuskaya answered.
Her 54.6m (179 ft) leap proved untouchable, as Brittany Greenwood Wharton fought valiantly through swans, current, and chop but failed to defend her crown. Danisheuskaya finally delivering the Moomba title that had eluded her through four previous runner-up finishes.
After years chasing Carroll, Danisheuskaya now had a major professional victory of her own.
The men’s jump final closed the tournament — and it felt like a fitting finale.
Joel Poland entered as the sport’s most dominant jumper of 2025 but struggled in qualifying. In the final he passed his first jump, then found himself awkwardly out of rhythm approaching the ramp.
What followed felt very on-brand.
Poland executed a series of quick hops during his glide — adjusting speed and timing mid-approach — before launching 68.1 meters (223 ft).
It was the sort of audacious improvisation that only Poland would attempt.
And somehow it worked.
Josh Wallent, a 28-year-old builder from South Australia, came closest with 64.1m (210 ft) — earning his first professional podium.
But the last word belonged to Ryan Dodd.
After a frustrating 2025 season chasing Poland, the Canadian looked imperious all weekend. His 69.9m qualifying jump had already put him well clear of the field.
In the final he needed six feet less.
Dodd delivered it comfortably, reclaiming the Moomba Masters jump title.
When the River Settled
There were disappointments, too.
Joel Poland’s solitary silver was a paltry haul for the triple threat. Kennedy Hansen narrowly missed the jump final on her first visit to the Yarra. World overall champion Dorien Llewelyn failed to capitalize on his opportunities in either the trick or jump finals. Edoardo Marenzi endured one of the toughest tournaments of his career—missing the slalom final, narrowly missing the jump cut, and finishing last in the lone final he made.
Even the best sometimes leave Melbourne with bruises.
Because that’s the thing about Moomba.
It never quite unfolds the way anyone expects.
But as the crowds finally drifted away from the riverbanks — past bridges, food stalls, and festival lights — one thing felt clear.
The sport’s established stars were still standing.
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.
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.
Water skiing’s longest-running professional event is set to return to the heart of Melbourne, as invitations have gone out for the 65th Nautique Moomba Masters International Invitational, scheduled for March 5–9, 2026 on the Yarra River.
The Victorian Water Ski Association has confirmed a deep and globally diverse field, featuring athletes from across the world and headlined by three reigning individual world champions, all of the 2025 men’s Waterski Pro Tour champions, and another rare Moomba appearance from newlywed world record holder Regina Critchley (née Jaquess). As ever, Moomba blends established stars with emerging talent, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere, where timing and travel continue to shape the competitive mix.
While some Northern Hemisphere absences reflect planning ahead to the 2027 World Championships, the overall roster promises no shortage of intrigue. From elite slalom and jump contenders to one of the strongest men’s trick fields assembled—led by Jake Abelson, Matías Gonzalez, Martín Labra, Joel Poland, and Patricio Font—the 2026 Moomba Masters once again looks poised to deliver five days of world-class competition at the centerpiece of the Melbourne Moomba Festival.
If 2025 was about rising performances and recalibrated ceilings, 2026 is shaping up to be about scale.
The upcoming season will unfold across three distinct professional tours, span five continents, and feature more high-level opportunities—and more complexity—than the sport has seen in years. For fans, it may be the most fragmented calendar in recent memory. For athletes, it could be one of the most promising.
At the center of the landscape sits the Waterski Pro Tour, still the backbone of elite slalom competition. Alongside it runs the four-stop WWS Overall Tour, continuing to elevate overall skiing with dedicated events in North America and Europe. And new for 2026 is the Nautique Water Ski World Series, a multi-year concept that begins this season at Botaski in July, continues through Rocky Mountain and the California ProAm, and carries momentum into the 2027 Moomba Masters and U.S. Masters.
It’s a fractured ecosystem—but not necessarily a broken one.
The downside is obvious: overlapping tours, different point systems, and a calendar that’s harder than ever for fans to follow cleanly. The upside, however, may be more significant. More tours mean more events, more prize money, and more chances for athletes to build sustainable professional careers. It also raises the stakes. Titles are no longer concentrated in one place. Rivalries can play out across formats, continents, and disciplines.
In short, 2026 may be messy—but it could also be healthier, deeper, and more competitive than any season this decade.
Below is the tentative 2026 calendar, with some details still yet to be finalized.
Water skiing in 2025 was a year of rising performances and expanding possibility. Records fell, ceilings collapsed, and moments that once felt unimaginable became routine. From teenagers rewriting history to veterans redefining resilience, the season delivered a relentless stream of storylines that pushed the sport forward while constantly testing its limits. It was a year where brilliance arrived in waves, controversies lingered, and the level required to win climbed higher with every event.
Across the Waterski Pro Tour, WWS Overall Tour, IWWF world championships at every level, and legacy stages like Moomba and the U.S. Masters, the sport unfolded through breakthroughs, confrontations, and generational shifts. New rivalries ignited. Established orders were challenged. And in disciplines once thought to have plateaued, sudden surges forced a rethink of what elite performance truly means.
As we count down the most memorable moments of the 2025 season, this list captures more than just victories and records. It reflects a sport in full acceleration—deeper, bolder, and more competitive than ever—and the athletes who defined it when expectations were highest and the spotlight brightest.
There’s always a particular optimism baked into the first major tournament of the season. The days grow longer, boats are dewinterized, and spring fever sets in. In recent years, that role has belonged to Moomba. But in 2025, the season’s opening statement came a week earlier—and from an unexpected corner of the calendar.
The University World Championships returned for the first time since 2016, staged in Auckland’s Orakei Basin, salt water shimmering in the heart of the city. The “Collegiate Worlds” brought together student-athletes from five continents, blending future stars, established pros, and wide-eyed newcomers thrilled to wear national colors. There were personal bests everywhere. There was Aaliyah Yoong Hannifah making history. And then there was Austria.
What the four Austrians pulled off bordered on absurd.
Against a Team USA contingent 14 strong—including a stacked six-skier A-team—Austria arrived with just four athletes. One was a single-event skier. Another, their strongest overall threat, withdrew at the last minute. There were no alternates. No safety nets. In tricks and jump, one misstep would have ended everything.
Instead, every skier delivered.
Luca Rauchenwald won jump outright. Lili Steiner claimed silver in jump and overall. Nikolaus Attensam posted the top men’s slalom score of prelims, maximizing team points. And Dominic Kuhn’s bronze in tricks—behind a field loaded with world champions—proved decisive.
In the 80-year history of IWWF world championships, only six nations had ever finished ahead of the United States. Only five had ever won a team title.
Make it six.
Undermanned, unflinching, and utterly fearless, Austria didn’t just win Auckland—they announced themselves. And in doing so, gave the 2025 season its first unforgettable moment.
There was a time when 13,000 points in men’s trick skiing felt like a myth. A ceiling. A number whispered with admiration, then dismissed with realism.
Enter Jake Abelson.
On a hot June weekend at Ski Fluid in central Florida, the 17-year-old American became the first skier in history to cross the barrier, posting 13,020 points. When the IWWF ratified the score, it didn’t just crown a new world record holder—it confirmed that trick skiing had entered a new era.
The milestone was years in the making. For nearly two decades, progress at the elite end of men’s tricks had been incremental, almost stagnant. Then came a surge. Patricio Font reignited the discipline in 2022. Matias Gonzalez raised the ceiling with relentless speed and precision. Suddenly, 12,000-point runs weren’t exceptional—they were the price of admission. In 2025, every men’s professional trick event was won with a score north of 12K.
The race to 13K was on.
Abelson got there first—but only just. Gonzalez and Font were right behind, pushing from different angles: Font with ruthless hand-pass efficiency, Gonzalez with audacious toe speed. And while Abelson claimed the milestone, the season’s most compelling moment came later.
At the World Championships in Recetto, with titles—not records—on the line, Gonzalez edged Abelson by ten points. Ten. The smallest possible margin in trick skiing. A single freeze-frame separating gold from silver.
In that sense, 13,000 wasn’t the finish line. It was proof of how narrow the margins have become.
For decades, 10.25 meters—41 off—stood as men’s slalom’s final frontier. A pass reserved for the extraordinary, spoken about in reverent tones. By the time the sun set on the 2025 Travers Grand Prix, it felt like something else entirely: the new baseline.
At Sunset Lakes in Groveland, four different skiers ran 41 off a combined seven times, obliterating the previous record of four, set just two years earlier. It wasn’t an isolated spike, either. Across the back half of the season—World Championships, MasterCraft Pro, and now Travers—men’s titles have increasingly been decided at 9.75 meters (43 off). The ceiling didn’t just crack in 2025. It caved in.
Nate Smith and Charlie Ross had led the charge, but at the Grand Prix they were joined by Jonathan Travers and Freddie Winter, all four pushing through 41 and into rarified air. Winter went furthest when it mattered most, advancing to 43 and sealing both the event win and his first-ever Waterski Pro Tour season championship.
“This is the first season title I’ve ever won,” Winter said, emotion spilling over. “A year and a half ago I had a really terrible time, I hurt myself, and I worked really hard to come back… This one’s for everyone who helped me come back.”
The women matched the drama stride for stride. Regina Jaquess, Jaimee Bull, and Whitney McClintock Rini produced the first three-way tie at 41 off in waterski history, forcing a cold-start runoff at 10.75 meters. Jaquess prevailed on the water, but Bull walked away with the bigger prize—her fifth consecutive Pro Tour season title.
Seven 41s. Four skiers into 43. One unmistakable message: the sport’s limits are shifting, and fast.
Unfortunately, one of the most memorable moments of the 2025 season earned its place in this countdown for all the wrong reasons. The Under-21 World Championships in Calgary were meant to spotlight the sport’s next generation. Instead, they became a reminder that, at times, judging—not skiing—can define a championship.
Held at Predator Bay, the U21 Worlds delivered much of what the event promises: breakout performances, record scores, and glimpses of future world champions. But during the women’s trick final, the focus shifted abruptly from athletic brilliance to adjudication.
When Colombia’s Daniela Verswyvel had her reverse mobe—an 800-point, title-swinging trick—ruled no-credit, the reaction was immediate and explosive. Live chats lit up. Elite skiers voiced disbelief. Formal protests were filed in the aftermath by Colombia, Canada, and the United States. The call stood, awarding gold to Canada’s Hannah Stopnicki and leaving Verswyvel heartbroken.
To her credit, Stopnicki—a deserving champion who could easily have won the title without controversy on another day—handled the moment with grace, embracing Verswyvel in a tearful scene that captured both the beauty and brutality of elite sport. “I know the judges are looking at everything extra carefully,” Stopnicki said afterward. “I was just trying to be as clean as I could be.”
The controversy didn’t end with the medals. The IWWF World Waterski Council launched a formal review, with Chief Judge Felipe Leal concluding—supported by EyeTrick data—that the panel was “very strict but consistent.” The issue, he stressed, was an unusually high number of non-credit calls that left many athletes dissatisfied.
The fallout reached beyond Calgary. Ahead of the Open Worlds in Italy, the Council committed to judge clinics aimed at improving consistency and restoring trust.
In a week meant to celebrate the future, Calgary instead exposed a fault line the sport can’t ignore. Trick judging, for all its tools and systems, remains far less objective than we’d like to believe.
The 64th Moomba Masters on Melbourne’s Yarra River wasn’t just another stop on the pro circuit—it was the crucible in which a new generation of champions was forged. Across the festival’s six professional events, four were won by first-time champions, setting the stage for breakthrough seasons.
In men’s tricks, 17-year-old Jake Abelson claimed his first professional victory, topping the highest-scoring podium in history. Moomba proved the launchpad for a meteoric season: Abelson went on to win the three largest prize-purse events, break the 13,000-point mark, and finish 2025 as the sport’s most dominant trick skier, despite a narrow World Championships defeat.
Slalom followed a similar trajectory. Nineteen-year-old Charlie Ross secured his first pro title with veteran composure, then rode that momentum to two pro wins, seven top-five finishes, U21 World Championships gold, and a silver at the Open Worlds—emerging as a genuine threat to Nate Smith and Freddie Winter for years to come.
The jump event crowned Joel Poland, returning from his Australian ban, as Moomba champion for the first time, launching an undefeated six-win season in men’s jump—a feat not achieved by any man since Freddy Krueger in 2006. Brittany Greenwood Wharton also claimed her debut professional victory, kicking off a season that included five podiums and a runner-up finish at the World Championships.
By the time the fireworks lit up Monday night’s jump finals, Moomba 2025 had delivered more than victories. Record-breaking performances, first-time champions, and a rising crop of elite athletes signaled a shift in the sport’s competitive landscape, reaffirming why the Moomba Masters remains water skiing’s ultimate proving ground.
The 2025 World Championships delivered countless historic moments, but perhaps none more electrifying than the men’s slalom final in Recetto—a showdown that redefined what elite slalom looks like.
When Nate Smith, one of the most reliable closers in water skiing history, posted one at 9.75m (43 off) skiing fourth off the dock, it seemed the title was settled. But over an hour later, 20-year-old Charlie Ross left the dock and matched him—forcing a sudden-death runoff for the world championship. For the first time in World Championships history, two skiers had to attempt 10.25m (41 off) cold, with gold on the line.
It was a generational collision. Smith, the standard-bearer of modern slalom. Ross, the breakout force of the year. Smith prevailed in the runoff, but the result felt secondary to the message: the gap had closed.
“I’ve never even tried 41 off the dock in practice,” Smith admitted afterward. “A lot goes through your head… but yeah, I’m pretty happy.”
The drama didn’t end in Italy. Weeks later, at the very next pro slalom event, Ross and Smith found themselves locked together again—tied once more at 43 off. Another runoff. Another razor-thin separation. Different venue, same script.
Back-to-back ties at the hardest line length in the sport, across two of the biggest stages of the season, felt less like coincidence and more like a turning point. Smith still claimed the crown, but Ross had firmly announced himself as his equal.
In a season defined by record-breaking depth and shrinking margins, no moment captured water skiing’s new reality quite like this one: the champion tested, the challenger confirmed, and a rivalry forged buoy by buoy at 43 off.
If 2025 has a defining rivalry, it has to be Erika Lang versus Neilly Ross. Lang started the season seemingly untouchable, going undefeated across Moomba, Swiss Pro Tricks, and the Masters, reclaiming the world record from Ross, and setting the tone for a dominant year.
Ross, meanwhile, looked out of sorts early on, traveling the globe and honing her craft in a grueling schedule that included competing in the men’s field in Monaco. It took six pro events, but in Portugal she finally broke through, clinching her first win of the season and nearly matching world record form—a statement that she was back.
The rivalry erupted at Botaski. Lang set a pending world record in the prelims, only for Ross to tie the current record in the finals, forcing Lang to chase a second world record just to win. Every trick, every frame, every point counted. Ross’ victory marked her first major triumph in three years and signaled a shift: Lang’s dominance was no longer assured.
The drama carried into the World Championships in Recetto, where both women arrived in red-hot form. Once again, victory was decided by a hair’s breadth, with Ross’ late-season momentum peaking at the perfect moment. Two athletes, pushing the limits of skill and precision, raised the standard for women’s trick skiing, making every pass a spectacle and every point a headline.
Lang remains one of the most successful women in the modern era, but Ross has proven she can match, and even surpass, the best—turning a personal comeback into one of the sport’s most thrilling storylines and taking women’s trick skiing to an entirely new level.
The men’s overall battle at the 2025 World Championships was the closest since 2009’s legendary three-way standoff, pitting Canada’s Dorien Llewellyn against defending champion Louis Duplan-Fribourg in a clash of precision, power, and pedigree.
The tournament began with a shock: Joel Poland, the sport’s most consistent tricker and early favorite, stumbled in the prelims. One front flip gone awry ended his flawless streak. Poland’s misstep became arguably the defining moment of the Worlds, a reminder that even the greatest can falter on the biggest stage.
From there, the men’s overall title came down to a hair. Duplan-Fribourg dominated tricks, setting the top score, and matched his personal best in slalom—but was penalized after a video gate review nullified his 10.75m pass, leaving him just 13 points behind Llewellyn. Every move counted.
Llewellyn, aiming to secure the title in the trick final, miscued on a landing and sank in disbelief, keeping the championship undecided. It all came down to jump. Duplan-Fribourg needed just 70 centimeters more to snatch the crown but came up short. In a performance echoing his 2021 duel with Joel Poland, Llewellyn soared 69.9 meters (229 feet), his best jump in years.
With that leap, Dorien Llewellyn followed in his father’s footsteps, claiming the World Overall title and cementing his place among water skiing royalty.
The 2025 World Championships proved that in overall competition, margins are measured in centimeters—and legends are defined by their ability to seize—or survive—the smallest of moments.
If Hollywood scripted a comeback, could it have been as dramatic as Freddie Winter’s at the 2025 U.S. Masters? Less than a year after shattering his femur in Monaco and missing most of 2024, the two-time world slalom champion returned to Robin Lake with history, expectations, and personal demons stacked against him. Winter’s fraught relationship with the Masters added another layer: banned in 2023 after an emotionally charged judging dispute, he had unfinished business on the event’s storied waters.
When the dust settled on Saturday’s brutal semifinals, the veterans were gone, leaving Winter as one of the few household names in the final. Last off the dock, chasing a lead set by Nate Smith, he hurled himself outside of three ball with trademark fearlessness. When the spray settled, Winter had done it—his first professional victory since his injury, his third Masters title, and arguably the most satisfying of his career. “Probably the most emotional moment of my life,” he said afterward. “So much self-doubt and fear I wouldn’t get back here over the last 10 months and 29 days.”
The Masters wasn’t just a singular triumph. It set the tone for the rest of Winter’s season: a string of consistent performances that saw him claim the Waterski Pro Tour title, rack up four pro victories (tying Nate Smith), and lead the year-end podium count. Though perhaps not fully back at 100 percent, Winter had reclaimed his place among the sport’s elite, proving that even after a potentially career ending injury, he could still define the men’s slalom narrative.
At Robin Lake, Freddie Winter reminded the water skiing world: the best stories aren’t just about victories—they’re about the journey to get there.
Across the sport, each new year seems to push performances to new and unprecedented heights. At many events, it has become commonplace for skiers to challenge—or even break—world records to clinch victory. It is, by almost any measure, a remarkable era to be a water ski fan.
One discipline, however, has largely resisted that trend. Jumping, with fewer events and shrinking opportunities, has seen its depth thin and top-end performances plateau. The concerning reality is that jump distances have not meaningfully improved this century and, by several metrics, have begun to decline.
All of which made what unfolded in Italy at this year’s World Championships all the more remarkable.
The tone was set in the opening days. Brandon Schipper arrived off a long-haul flight, skipped familiarization, and promptly unleashed the biggest jumps of his career. He wasn’t alone. Across the early rounds, season-bests and lifetime bests fell like dominoes. By week’s end, the cut to make the men’s jump final was the highest in World Championships history.
The finals delivered the crescendo. On the women’s side, personal bests stacked quickly—Maise Jacobsen and Aaliyah Yoong Hannifah both breaking 50 meters for the first time, with the entire top five clearing 170 feet. Brittany Greenwood Wharton, capping a career-best season, produced her longest jump in years to set the target. Hanna Straltsova, unflappable as ever, needed just two jumps to defend her title and complete another golden double.
Then came the men’s final—chaos, courage, and generational turnover wrapped into one shoreline spectacle. Eighteen-year-old Tim Wild, fresh off his first-ever 60-meter jump days earlier, flew 68.1m to announce himself on the sport’s biggest stage. Eight men cracked 220 feet. Schipper, giddy after another personal best, tapped home early, almost disbelieving what he’d just unleashed.
But the crown belonged to Joel Poland. His opening leap—72.1m, a personal best and new European record—froze the crowd. He passed his remaining jumps, gambling it would hold. It did. Ryan Dodd chased, cleared 70, and fell just short. With that, a three-decade lineage of North American jump dominance quietly ended.
In a discipline that had seemed stuck in neutral, Recetto felt like liftoff. Against every recent trend, jump delivered depth, drama, and distances that forced a recalibration of what was possible. Perhaps there is new life in water ski jumping after all.
Honorable Mentions
Aaliyah Yoong Hannifah’s triple-gold performance at the University World Championships, the first world titles ever won by an Asian competitor.
Tim Wild’s historic clean sweep at the Junior Masters—the first by a male skier in the event’s history.
Hanna Straltsova breaking the longest-standing record in the sport, by less than a third of an overall point.
Charlie Ross running 10.25m (41 off) at two different tournaments on the same day, breaking Will Asher’s 22-year-old collegiate record and tying for the lead at a professional event in the process.
Joel Poland setting yet another world record in professional competition to clinch the WWS Overall Tour season title.
Independent perspectives on tournament water skiing
