Wakeboarding is a combination of surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding and waterskiing.
A wakeboard looks like a fat snowboard with a pair of bindings attached to it.
The wakeboarder carves turns with body leans and by rocking the board. During competition,
wakeboarders do flips and spins and other acrobatic stunts in the air and on the water.
These tricks are spectacular to witness — some athletes go as high as 25 feet in the
air while doing a maneuver. Wakeboarding is included in the X-Games which features exciting
non-Olympic sports such as sky surfing, rock-climbing, skate-boarding and mountain-biking.
How it all began - In 1991 a company called Hyperlite got together with some of the best
surfboard shapers in Hawaii to design and build the first compression-molded neutral-buoyancy
wakeboard, a hybrid of a waterski and a surfboard. Hyperlite added boot to the board which allowed riders to
jump high off the water. The Hyperlite's neutral buoyancy allowed the rider to submerge it for easy
deepwater starts. The board had a thin profile and would carve like a slalom ski. It also had phasers
(large dimples on the bottom), which broke up water adhesion and gave the board a quicker
"loose" feel and softer landings from wake jumps.
Recreational wakeboarders cover all age ranges and skill levels. However, the Pros are a young crowd
ranging in age from early teens to early 20's. The style and attitude are laid back, similar to the
skateboarding and in-line crowd but a bit more upscale simply because the sport requires more than a
board or blades — it requires a boat to propell them across the water.
Today, wakeboarding is the fastest growing water sport in Singapore.
 History of Wakeboarding in Singapore
Ever since the SWWF invited World Champion Wakeboarder Dean Lavelle to launch himself up in the air, throwing somersaults at Kallang Riverside Park in 1996, wakeboarding has become the fastest growing watersport in Singapore increasing over 100 percent in participation over the past three years.
The Singapore Waterski & Wakeboard Federation organised the first wakeboarding competition in Singapore in 1994 at Kallang Riverside Park. Eight riders competed in that event, and today an average of 80 competitors compete in these competitive wakeboarding events at Kallang Riverside Park. The SWWF has continued to promote wakeboarding by personally inviting other professional wakeboarders from the U.S.A. to perform demonstrations in Singapore.
In 2000,
the SWWF selected Singapore's first National Wakeboard
Team to compete in the 1st. WWC Wakeboard World Championships
in Montpellier, France. Samantha Knott won a gold in the
Junior Ladies event and Roger Koa placed fourth in the
Men's Open event. |
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