Have you ever been near a lake and heard a mysterious deep rumble accompanied by the sound of large crashing waves? If you said no to this question, most people would be surprised. What you’re hearing is the thunderous presence of a wakeboard boat and it’s rider, a common sound among today’s lake communities. If you go back 25 or more years this wouldn’t have been the case. Most likely people would have been out casually water skiing at a relaxed pace. Since 1995 wakeboarding has become the world’s most rapidly evolving sport and is now a quite quotidian activity for lake goers. The rapid evolution of wakebards, boats and tricks have laid ground work and continue to build upon the very young sport we know as wakeboarding.
Evolution of Wakeboards …show more content…
As stated by Wiedenhofer of The Gap Magazine, Finn and Redon formed a fiduciary partnership with “Waketech” and were funded to be able to build the first twin tip, symmetrical wakeboard called the “Flight 69” in 1994 (1). This is the model all wakeboards follow today. Standard for all companies are the different rocker types, which is the way the board is curved. You have a continuous, 3 stage and hybrid rocker. This gives riders today more room to choose what’s comfortable for them rather than everyone having to ride a continuous rocker like back in the mid 90’s. The three rockers provide different levels of control and release off the wake. For example a continuous rocker, as said by Jason from Wake Origin, “[is] [a] smooth, predictable release off the wake[,] [which] makes for a very controlled pop”, while a 3 stage rocker, as Jason says, “[has][a] more explosive pop, sends[ing] [the] rider up more than out for additional height and more air time.” This is just a small example how companies like Liquid Force have pioneered this technology and diversity to allow riders to evolve in exploring new elements of wakeboarding.
Evolution of Wakeboard Boats
Since wakeboarding started to rise in popularity, now that the basis model for the wakeboard had been constructed, the demand for boats became higher and higher. Manufacturers started to push the limits for what was possible …show more content…
In just 20 short years, the gear for wakeboarding far surpasses where another sports would have been at this time. As well, the boat market has drastically changed with the introduction of wakeboard boats and all their technology, and this has in turn elevated what is capable in the sport as far as tricks are concerned. Typically it take sports many decades to develop to their advanced present self, where as wakeboarding has taken less than 3 decades. We don’t often get to witness evolution because it takes quite a long time but with wakeboarding something new happens