Image: Ian Staples
By RTB
5 minute play
In this quiz, you have to name the female skiers with the most consecutive U.S. Masters titles of all time.
The list contains 14 skiers across 21 different streaks, all of whom have won at least three consecutive titles. Two jumpers are tied for the longest streak with seven titles back-to-back. We have mentioned the event and years of their consecutive titles.
Spotlighting waterskiing’s champion moms for Mother’s Day
By Jack Burden
When we talk about mothers, it’s easy to reach for words like strength, sacrifice, and love. But some mothers go a step further — they don’t just juggle the demands of parenting; they shatter records, hoist trophies, and tilt the axis of their sport. In the high-speed, high-skill world of professional water skiing, these women have shown that motherhood isn’t a hurdle. It’s rocket fuel.
Water skiing has always been a family affair — a sport where weekends on the lake spark lifelong passions and where the dock is as much a playground as it is a battleground. Yet these women have carved more than just slalom courses. They’ve carved new narratives. From toppling outdated assumptions to commanding podiums on the world’s biggest stages, they’ve proven that athletic prime and parenting aren’t mutually exclusive. In honor of Mother’s Day, here are five extraordinary water ski moms whose performances redefine what’s possible.
Image: @whitrini
A decade ago, she was water skiing’s “Golden Girl.” Today, she’s a golden mom — and still one of the sport’s fiercest competitors. After giving birth to her son, Zane, in 2020, McClintock Rini returned to the pro tour the following season as if motherhood was just another notch on her belt. Over the past four years, she’s captured a dozen professional titles and has consistently ranked among the top three slalomers in the world, winning roughly one out of every three events she enters.
Her résumé reads like a chronicle of dominance: five world titles, a world slalom record, and countless professional victories. Her reign at Australia’s Moomba Masters — where she claimed her tenth slalom title earlier this year — is the stuff of legend. And now, with Zane often cheering lakeside, she’s showing no signs of slowing down.
Image: @trueloveski
If resilience had a face in women’s slalom, it might be Karen Truelove’s. The American is arguably the most impressive mom on this list, competing well into her 40s and holding the distinction of being the eldest woman to win a professional title. After giving birth to her son Dash in early 2009, Truelove returned midway through the same season, closing it out with two victories and two runner-up finishes. Five years later, at 40 and just months after welcoming her second son, Ridge, she was still climbing podiums and collecting medals.
One of the most decorated slalomers in the sport, she remains a blueprint for longevity and grit — and now watches her own sons begin their ascent in the junior ranks.
Image: @vennesavieke
Some athletes peak young. Vennesa Leopold Vieke rewrote that script after becoming a mom. Before giving birth to her daughter in 2017, the Australian had just one professional podium to her name. Since then, she’s blossomed into one of the most consistent women’s slalom skiers on tour — notching regular podium finishes while balancing life with her two children, Riverlee and Ezra.
Her crowning achievement came in 2022, when she clinched victory at the Moomba Masters — a moment that cemented her transformation from promising talent to seasoned champion. Her Waterski Pro Tour standings over the past four years (9th, 12th, 10th) tell the story of a competitor not just hanging on but thriving well into her prime — long after many would have expected her to fade.
Image: @danemechler
Germany’s Giannina Bonnemann Mechler barely took a breath before getting back on the water. Nine months after welcoming her son, Luca, she’s already chasing elite form again. Earlier this year, she cracked the final at the Swiss Pro Tricks and secured qualification for the U.S. Masters with a score flirting with 10,000 points — a benchmark reserved for the sport’s upper echelon.
In 2023, Bonnemann Mechler went undefeated on the WWS Overall Tour and earned silver at the World Championships. One of only six women to trick over 10,000 points, her scores across all three events have sparked whispers of a potential challenge to Natallia Berdnikava’s longstanding world overall record. With her husband, top-ranked slalomer Dane Mechler, by her side and Luca in tow, Giannina’s comeback arc is one to watch.
Image: @action_horizons_stunts
If you blinked, you might have missed Jacinta Carroll’s tenure as an elite waterski mom — but what a flash it was. Just 100 days after giving birth to her daughter, Amelia, Carroll captured her 10th consecutive Moomba Masters jump title. It also served as her swan song: she announced her retirement from competition immediately after the victory.
Carroll’s résumé is staggering: 42 consecutive professional victories, five straight world titles (2013–2021), and the first woman to jump 200 feet. Known affectionately as “Rabbit,” she dominated women’s jumping from her teenage years, rarely losing and often setting records while doing so. Her final victory — achieved with just two weeks of on-water training post-pregnancy and the support of an international recovery team — was a fitting finale for an athlete who made a career of redefining boundaries in the sport.
As Carroll put it bluntly to other new mothers eyeing a quick return: “Don’t try this at home.” But whether they do or don’t, her legacy — like those of the other mothers on this list — has already expanded the definition of what’s possible.
Image: @thefredwinter
By Jack Burden
CLERMONT, FLA. — On Sunday afternoon, under the sinking Florida sun at Swiss Waterski Resort, Freddie Winter climbed back onto a professional podium for the first time since the crash that nearly ended his career.
For the outspoken Englishman, the third-place finish at the Swiss Pro Slalom wasn’t just another podium—it was a statement. Less than a year removed from a broken femur that sidelined him for most of 2024, the two-time world slalom champion reminded the waterski world that not only is he back—he’s still a threat.
“I sat in bed watching a lot of skiing in the following months wanting so bad to be back amongst it,” Winter wrote after the event. “I’ve worked as hard as I know how since to get back to where I could be competitive. Yesterday it started to feel like I can be.”
Nate Smith was, as ever, imperious. His 5 at 41 (10.25m) in the finals comfortably secured a seventh Swiss Pro title, continuing his reign as the most dominant male slalom skier of the past decade. Vaughn, in second, has picked up his strong form from 2024, delivering one of the event’s grittier performances.
Yet the buzz along the shoreline and in the digital stands—thousands tuning into The Waterski Broadcasting Company’s stream—centered on the fiery Brit. In a sport that often rewards the relentless metronome of perfection, Winter’s brand of visible, determined grind struck a different chord.
Elite slalom skiing is a sport of risk and razor-thin margins. At last June’s Monaco Slalom Cup, Freddie’s pursuit of victory ended with a violent crash into the dock. The images of him stretchered off were a stark reminder of how quickly everything can change.
Doctors predicted up to a year off the water. He gave it just over six months.
While Sunday’s result doesn’t fully reflect his ultimate ambitions, it signals clear progress. After battling through early rounds, Winter secured a place in the finals alongside some of the sport’s most consistent performers.
“I’m a work in progress and I’m happy,” he said. “I’m very happy to be competing with all these guys where I was really struggling not too long ago.”
Winter’s podium performance isn’t just about his skiing—it signals that the 2025 season is shaping up to be as fiercely competitive as 2024, if not more. With veterans like Travers, Asher, and Smith still pushing the limits, and a rising wave of new challengers, the men’s field is sharper and more crowded than ever.
With Freddie Winter back in the fold, the season just got a lot more interesting.
Image: @waterski_nation
By Jack Burden
The 2025 Swiss Pro Slalom will not feature on the Waterski Pro Tour after the event failed to meet the minimum prize purse threshold required for tour inclusion. A blip? A bureaucratic technicality? Or is it a mirror held up to the broader struggles of professional waterskiing?
The numbers are clear cut: a total prize purse of $12,000—half of last year’s offering—falls below the threshold required to maintain its star-level status. Technically, it could qualify as an introductory event, but only if it hadn’t worn the badge of a higher-tier competition in both 2023 and 2024. So here we are, with a top-tier webcast and world-class athletes, but an event that no longer qualifies for the official tour it helped define.
And therein lies the tension.
In many ways, the Swiss Pro Slalom is the blueprint for modern waterski events. Held in the heart of Central Florida—a stone’s throw for most of the world’s elite—it minimizes travel costs and sidesteps the logistical sprawl of international hosting. There’s no scramble to pack bleachers with spectators. Instead, the focus is squarely on the screen, with a heavy investment in producing a polished, professional webcast. In fact, the Swiss Pro has served as the unofficial proving ground for The Waterski Broadcasting Company (TWBC), the undisputed titan of waterski streaming. It’s their backyard. It’s their home court. And it shows.
But for all its polish, the money has rarely matched the production quality. Since its 2015 inception, the Swiss Pro Slalom has usually operated on the financial fringes. Its status has bobbed between introductory and non-qualifying levels, only recently ascending to a more lucrative tier in 2023 and 2024—before falling back again this year.
Yet despite modest prize purses, Swiss Pro Slalom remains TWBC’s most viewed webcast every year. It routinely eclipses richer, flashier tournaments with deeper sponsor pockets. Which begs the obvious question: does prize money matter as much as we think it does?
If viewership is the metric that counts, then maybe not. But if professional waterskiing becomes a loop of Central Florida-based events rewarding only the top three athletes, the ceiling lowers fast. There’s a real danger the sport becomes a closed circuit: elite, expensive to enter, and hard to sustain.
Current event funding models lean heavily on a trio of lifelines—endemic sponsors, community benefactors, and increasingly, athlete entry fees. That’s a brittle structure. One good gust and it all falls apart. And yet, the answer may not be to pour more into the prize pot, but to grow the audience instead.
Which is precisely what TWBC is trying to do.
Armed with high-tech cameras, drones, slick graphics, and expert commentators, TWBC has become the face of waterski broadcasting. In 2024 alone, it streamed 10 of the 13 Waterski Pro Tour events. Its influence is unmissable. Since COVID-era lockdowns drove viewership online, TWBC’s numbers have surged—at least initially. But since 2020, YouTube viewership has plateaued. Publicly available data shows a consistency in viewer counts, not growth. Maybe the deeper analytics tell a different story, but the surface stats suggest a ceiling has been hit.
Still, the ambition hasn’t waned. TWBC’s 2023 documentary project drew over 140,000 views, taking a page from Formula One’s “Drive to Survive” playbook. But the follow-up series, The Rise of Waterskiing, hasn’t yet caught fire. The sport is still waiting for its breakout moment.
Meanwhile, nearly every major player in the sport is all-in on TWBC. And for fans, this might just be the golden age. You can watch almost every event live, for free, and in better quality than ever before. But current viewership alone doesn’t pay the bills—or the prize checks. If it did, the Swiss Pro Slalom wouldn’t be fighting for tour status.
So here we are. The Swiss Pro Slalom won’t appear on the Waterski Pro Tour in 2025. But it’ll still feature a stacked field of athletes. It’ll still be produced with unmatched polish. And if history is any guide, it’ll still be the most watched event of the year. For all its flaws, it remains one of the best exhibitions of pro slalom skiing.
Will that be enough?
I’ll be watching. Odds are, if you’ve read this far, you will too. And maybe that’s the metric that matters most.
After all, if a rope is shortened at the lake and no one sees it, did it really happen?
Image: @tiaremirandaphotography
Of the athletes from each of professional waterskiing’s three disciplines, trickers have the greatest preoccupation with tournament scores. Whereas pro slalomers and jumpers are, on the whole, primarily concerned with the placement their scores bring them, a conversation with a pro tricker about their season goals will often center around breaking a certain trick point barrier, frequently the world record.
This discrepancy across events – incredibly few slalom or jump skiers consider the world record as a primary goal – is a product of the health of tricks as a professional event, or lack thereof. The total number of pro trick events in the last decade is utterly dwarfed by those of jump, and especially slalom. Often there were only two events, Moomba and Masters, in which a tricker could compete for money. In these years the professional season was finished in May. Inevitably a focus on big scores ensued, as the hard working trickers sought a reason to continue their endeavor for the rest of the year.
Unfortunately this meant many of tricking’s most impressive feats occurred largely unseen: in events in someone or other’s backyard, with a handful of competitors and maybe the odd alligator as a ‘crowd’. Realistically these were more ‘trial’ rounds with real competition between athletes very thin on the ground. These scores might be posted on social media in grainy video at some point down the road, in the event of an approved record, but a huge majority of these performances would never be experienced by anyone much beyond the skier themselves. Indeed, presumably unless a personal best was broken the whole thing was considered a waste of time. A true shame given that pro level tricking – certainly waterskiing’s most diverse discipline – is extraordinarily impressive.
In the last years, new trick events have popped up to offer a platform to these athletes who so needed a greater, more consistent stage. This started two years ago with the first Swiss Pro Tricks, an event whose primary aim was to give tricking the front and center treatment: a full day of pure spins, flips, line-over and toeholds without any distraction from the other disciplines that often hog the limelight. Fortunately others have taken up the mantle: this summer there will be a handful of events across Europe making up a trick tour. And, even better, it is inarguable that when these athletes are given the opportunity to perform in front of the world they do so. And then some.
The Swiss Pro Tricks of 2025 not only saw the best ever scores in a pro event by both women and men but, in a confirmation that real competition brings out the best in top athletes, they each occurred exactly when it counted: in the final.
In the women’s event, across the opening two rounds there were few surprises. Erika Lang, Anna Gay and Neilly Ross, for so long the dominant trio of women’s tricking, cantered into the final with scores above 10k. Giannina Bonnemann claimed the comeback of the day, qualifying not too far behind in fourth, just eight months after bearing her first child.
In the final itself Neilly Ross’s final flip was out of time leaving her 10,300. Anna Gay’s 10,890 second to last off the dock left her leading as Erika Lang took to the water. But, as Gay herself mentioned in an interview, Lang is a hell of a competitor. No one was surprised the when she needed to go big for her 2nd win of the year she went huge: Erika broke the 11k barrier for the first time this year in women’s skiing while setting the best ever pro event score in the process.
Erika’s ascendency to the dominant tricker of recent times should be studied. In the decade after winning her first event in March 2013 she won a further 10 events. In the last 2 years and 2 months she has won 10 events of a possible 12. On today’s evidence no one would count against her continuing this run far into the future.
Conversely to the women’s division, men’s tricks has recently been a relative to-and-fro between a number of the experienced and up-and-comers. Pato Font’s own period of near-total dominance ended with wins from a broader pool of skiers. In the last year these have included Mati Gonzalez, Jake Abelson and Martin Labra (absent from this event due to a knee injury).
Gonzalez was the defending champion here after his debut win at last year’s event. The start of his defence did not go to plan as a judging camera malfunction meant he had to return to the water after what would have been a good run. The subsequent fall put him at risk of missing the final if he had a substandard second qualifying round. There would have been many viewers concerned for the visibly rattled 17 year old. Not to worry though: his second round saw him top score in qualifying with 12,510 despite claiming he was trying to go “very slow” to ensure he wouldn’t repeat a fall. But the best was yet to come.
Disappointing rounds in the final from Pato Font and Jake Abelson meant there was an opportunity. Louis Duplain-Fribourg, perhaps the best tricker without a pro win, came close with 11,850. Joel Poland must have thought he’d done enough with a personal best of 12,400 – superior to his winning score at this event two years ago. But then came something special. Mati Gonzalez, proving to be an old head on young shoulders as he completed the perfect comeback arc across three rounds, brought the house down with an astonishing 12,860. Amongst his elation, even he was surprised.
2025 will see the most professional trick events in a single year in living memory. This is a huge opportunity not only for the athletes to compete where it counts – in front of the eyes of the world – but also for fans of waterskiing and beyond to really get to grips with and buy into this hitherto unheralded discipline. As for today, at the 2025 Swiss Pro Tricks, a world record was not broken. No, the intensity of the competition, the diversity of athleticism and the magnitude of multiple performances made what we saw that much greater.
Relive all the action from the finals of the Swiss Pro Tricks.
By TWBC
Follow the rapidly changing new era of professional waterskiing as it goes through rises, falls, and everything in between in this adrenaline fueled series.
Image: Facebook
By RTB
5 minute play
In this quiz, you need to name the youngest skiers to win a professional tournament since 2000.
The list has 24 skiers, all of whom have won their first professional event before their 20th birthday. While the list is dominated by female trickers, there is at least one winner from each discipline. We have given you the skier’s country, event, and age at the time of their first victory.
Data updated as of March 10, 2024
Get to know our girl Jaimee Bull a little bit better.
Image: Moomba Masters
By Jack Burden
MELBOURNE, Australia – The 64th Nautique Moomba Masters International Invitational, the longest running event in professional water skiing, delivered another electrifying spectacle on the Yarra River. With its storied history and the festival’s raucous backdrop, no event in the sport draws a bigger live audience. And with it came the unpredictability, the high drama, and a new crop of champions.
The Moomba Masters is as much a battle against the conditions as it is against the competition. The infamous Yarra River played its role once again, dashing the hopes of even the most seasoned skiers. The cutthroat LCQ format and brutal preliminary rounds saw big names like reigning under-21 world champion Annemarie Wroblewski and experienced duo Elizabeth and Steven Island miss out on the slalom finals. Trick skiing had its own share of heartbreak, as reigning world overall champion Louis Duplan-Fribourg, along with several other top contenders, failed to navigate their way into the finals after a string of early falls.
Finals Monday kicked off with a fireworks display in the tricks event, where the women’s showdown was another chapter in the decade-long dominance of Erika Lang, Anna Gay Hunter, and Neilly Ross. Lang, already the Moomba course record holder, set the pace by rewriting her own mark with 10,830 points in the prelims. The final was razor-close, but Lang edged out Hunter and Ross for her third consecutive Moomba Masters crown.
The men’s event was an all-out war, where 12,000-plus was the magic number. Joel Poland, returning to the Moomba Masters after a five-year absence, threw down early with a score above 12,000. Jake Abelson, already riding high from his junior competition victory and course record (12,150), stepped up to take the lead with 12,230. Reigning world champion Patricio Font stumbled in his toe pass and couldn’t claw his way back despite a monster hand pass. Then came top seed Matias Gonzalez, seemingly on the brink of victory until he opted for a wake 180 over a high-scoring risk move, handing the title to Abelson—his first professional win. It also marked the first time in history that all three podium finishers cracked the 12,000-point barrier.
Women’s slalom delivered a storyline no scriptwriter could have crafted better. The two favorites, Whitney McClintock Rini and defending champion Regina Jaquess, had barely survived the LCQs after early-round struggles. But McClintock Rini, skiing first in the finals, set a mark that none of the remaining 7 skiers could beat, securing her tenth Moomba Masters title and cementing her status as the undisputed Queen of Moomba.
The men’s slalom final was another thriller in what has become a wildly unpredictable discipline. Nine different winners in 2024 suggested an anything-goes environment in 2025, and the final reflected just that. Sixteen-year-old Damien Eade took the early lead, before Poland—showcasing his versatility—edged further down the 10.75m line. Then came Freddie Winter, just nine months removed from a broken femur, clawing his way into contention before local hero Lucas Cornale raised the bar to three buoys. It seemed a winning score until the wily veteran Thomas Degasperi managed a piece of four ball, setting the challenge for top seed Charlie Ross. The 19-year-old Canadian skied with a composure beyond his years, securing a full four and his maiden professional title, making him the youngest Moomba Masters slalom champion since Carl Roberge in the early ‘80s.
While the conditions kept the scores low in slalom, the jump event was an entirely different story, with personal bests falling like dominos throughout the tournament. The absence of Jacinta Carroll, who had dominated the women’s event for over a decade, left a power vacuum that was quickly filled by Brittany Greenwood Wharton. Making her Moomba Masters debut, the American put together a gutsy performance to fend off a strong challenge from Aliaksandra Danisheuskaya and secure her first professional title.
On the men’s side, the competition was stacked, but the weekend quickly morphed into a two-man showdown between Austria’s Luca Rauchenwald, fresh off a University World’s victory, and Great Britain’s Joel Poland. Poland, already having an outstanding weekend across multiple events, continued his surge by launching a monstrous 69-meter (226-foot) leap to claim his first Moomba Masters jump title. But he wasn’t done yet. Under the Melbourne city fireworks display, he capped off the event with a dominant night jump victory, soaring 68.6 meters (225 feet) off the smaller 5.5-foot ramp, putting an emphatic exclamation point on his weekend.
The 2025 Moomba Masters was a festival of breakthroughs and unexpected turns, a reminder that on the Yarra, past records and rankings often mean little. New champions were crowned, legends continued to build their legacies, and the world’s biggest water skiing stage proved once again why it remains unmatched in drama and spectacle. As the crowds dispersed and the festival wound down, one thing was clear: the Moomba Masters remains the ultimate test of talent, nerve, and resilience.
