18: A NEW DIRECTION
A trio of riders from North Carolina refused to roll over for the wakeboarding juggernaut. Jonathan Macdonald and his brother David were joined by Billy Rossini in an effort to resurrect kneeboarding., The triumvirate of tricksters pushed kneeboarding into a new direction that was based on big air. Not the big air […]
17: SWITCHED STANCE
In 1992 The Budweiser Water Ski Pro Tour added kneeboarding and wakeboarding competitions. For the first time in several years, the kneeboarding event was not a Hydroslide exclusive, and all the best riders had a chance to participate. But even that couldn’t lure me out of retirement from competitive kneeboarding. Sea-Doo was the […]
15: SCARED STRAIGHT
One of my scariest moments in skiing came during a ski show in Guayacil, Ecuador. Fabrizio Malnati invited the HO/Hyperlite team south of the equator to help promote his ski shop. The team consisted of Darin Shapiro, Bebe Anderson, and myself.
During one part of the show Darin and I both rode behind one […]
Recently retired watersports “superdealer” Tommy Phillips has been given a higher calling to create the Wakeboarding Hall of Fame (WHOF). People everywhere are sharing photos and stories from the early days. Along the way Tommy has contacted many key people around the world to help him turn his vision into a reality.
The Wakeboarding Hall of […]
Jump! Let your feet fly back in an act of faith. Tug on the handle to ride it out. It’s commonly known as an Air Raley, but the generic term for this gravity-defying trick is the Layout. Versions of it have been performed for decades on just about everything. Here’s an inside look at the […]
