Adam Prudhomme
Beaver Staff
Only the elite remain standing at the 2018 IWWF World Barefoot Water Ski Championships, which continues today through Saturday at Dream Lake in Selby.
After four days of preliminary jumps, slaloms and tricks, the field of the world’s top skiers from 13 different countries has been whittled down to the semifinals and finals, which begins this morning.
Halfway through the tournament, the man-made Dream Lake has drawn rave reviews from the skiers.
“I was here a few years ago back in 2014, it was a little bit smaller then,” said Mitch Groen, a member of New Zealand’s national team.
“(Dream Lake property owners) Dwight and Michelle (Williams) have made it a bit longer and now you couldn’t ask for a better lake in terms of backwash, there’s no wash back (from the speedboat used to pull the skiers) coming back off the shore. It’s been beautiful and calm. It’s potentially world record-setting conditions. We’ve seen some really good skiing conditions the last couple of days.”
This marked the first time the World Barefoot Water Ski Championships have been held in Canada, but after already hosting a number of large-scale events, Dream Lake’s reputation preceded it.
“Our team that we’ve brought over from New Zealand is the largest it’s been in a long time,” added Georgia Groen, another New Zealand competitor who happened to be leading in the jump category with a distance of 72 feet heading into Wednesday’s action. “It just goes to show how good of a site it is, people wanted to come ski here. It’s awesome, I’m loving it.”
There will be plenty of Canadian content in the finals after strong showings in the preliminaries.
“When you’re out here, you’re competing for yourself but you’re also competing for the team,” said Canada’s Brem Allen, who was eighth overall in the open men’s division heading into Wednesday’s action. “There’s some good countries here that are all vying for the top spot, we’ll see how it all shakes out as the tournament progresses.”
Allen was the top ranked Canadian with 792.08 points in slalom, 550.56 in tricks and 838.95 in jump, followed by George Weekes (732.67, 352.06 and 816.48) in 13th and Don Schwartz in 17th (544.55, 191.01, 359.55).
On the women’s’ side Belleville’s Becky Moynes Meyer was Canada’s top skier in sixth with 629.41, 487.39 and 564.22. She was third overall in the jump with a distance of 40 feet.
Along with representing her country, Moynes Meyer is hoping to help grow the sport this week in Canada as well.
“Hopefully it’ll generate some interest in skiers in the area,” she said of hosting an event of this magnitude. “We’re hoping in the next couple of days, because we’re so far ahead of schedule, to take an afternoon without some tournament skiing going on to get some of the locals out to ski with some of the best in the world and get some interest going and try and grow the sport.”
Weekes agreed that this week is a perfect opportunity to introduce some more Canadians to the sport.
“There’s seniors, juniors and open so people of all ages can get involved and work their way up and make it to the world stage,” said Weekes. “We’re a very inclusive group.”
Heading into the semifinals and finals David Small of Great Britain was the top overall men’s open leader followed by Jackson Gerard and Keith St. Onge of the U.S.
On the women’s side Australia’s Ashleigh Stebbings led the way followed by Georgia Groen and the U.S.’s Lexi McCauley.
McCauley was the top junior girl, followed by U.S. teammates Alex Youngblood and Ryleigh Stenson.
Jackson led the junior boys followed by Tee-Jay Russo of Australia and William Leigh of New Zealand.
A schedule of the events can be found at www.iwwfed-ea.org. Admission to all events are free and the public is invited to come watch. Dream Lake is located at 1632 County Rd. 11 in Selby.