Freestyle Remember When Standup trends

W

waxhead

wannabe backflipper
Location
gold coast
I remember when you werent allowed to race a superjet as it wasnt homologated. They let in them in one year and they cleaned up every class except the 550 class
 
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JMew03

JMew03

The call me Mew Mew
Location
DFW,TX
I prefer the footholds as far back as possible. But im a tall fella.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I497 using Tapatalk 4
 
yamaslut

yamaslut

kill it
Location
Daytona Beach, Florida
front exhaust still rules, scuppers rule, REV footholds are the best, fixed steering skis will retire the pole (ha ha ha, never), adjustable handpole, what?? ha ha


riser bars are not a trend... they are a great mod that helps in a lot of ways
 
227

227

Its all about the surf!
Location
Oceanside, CA
I'm not exactly sure what year I attended my first World Finals, but It was sometime in the late 80's, and I haven't missed one since so I've literally seen this sport evolve from almost the beginning. In the late 80's I remember some of the top names in the sport were Larry Rippenkroger and Dave Gordon, both who raced and did freestyle. Larry blew the crowd away in freestyle when he did a submarine on his modded 440. The next few years saw big names like (PJS) Performance Jet Ski, Butch's, R&R Jet Tech and West Coast Performance, who sponsored young riders like Jeff Jacobs, Chris Fichetti, Victor Sheldon and Christy Carlson. There was also this up and coming little kid named Chris MacCluggage. In the early 90's the popularity of jet ski racing soared, and for a few years the World finals had crowds in excess of 30,000 spectators. At the same time Couch sales really took off, accounting for almost 98% of new watercraft sales. Based on the sales ratios of Stand ups/verses Sit-downs, the Manufactures used their influence to push out the stand up skis as the main attraction, replacing them with mainly couch races. This really hurt the sport because of the 98% who bought a couch 2% competed on it or attended the competitions while of the 2% who bought a stand up, 98% competed on it, so there was a huge stand up fan base being fed couch racing. The numbers in WF attendance steadily declined. By the time the bean counters figured out what they had done, it was way too late. I remember a few years with just a few thousand in attendance and there was talk of discontinuing the World Finals all together. Thank fully the same group of hard core stand up riders that make up the back bone of the sport continued it on, and it eventually shifted back to emphasis on the stand up. WF has slowly recovered since then, but nothing like it was, despite the amazing progress in skis over the last 10 years. World Finals is fairly healthy now, I'm going to guess the attendance for the last few years is probably around the 5,000 spectators range, I could be way off though.

The major turning points I remember through the evolution of the sport are: In the early times, the emphasis was on racing. Everyone owned and raced a Kawi because that's all there was. When Yamaha introduced the square nose, which proved to be a much better race ski, the majority switched to a Yamaha and Yamaha solidified its position in the industry. Freestyle mainly consisted of balance tricks where Subs, 360's and hood tricks where the big scoring moves. In the mid 90's The industry domination was taken over by Yamaha because the superjet was not only a better race ski but its preferred power to weight ration made it the freestylers choice also. In the late 90's surf races where the rage, and freestyle was pretty played out and just tagged along as half time entertainment. That all changed when Rick Roy, busted out a Back flip for the first time ever at San Buena Ventura Beach at a West Coast surf race in CA. Everyone who was there and saw it, including myself, jaws dropped and hit the sand. Prior to that day, Nobody even thought such a maneuver was even possible, but we all saw it before our own eyes. That changed everything in Freestyle as the emphasis turned from flat water hood tricks to big surf aerials. Freestyle was exciting again and the next few years of surf events ushered in a whole new group of crazies pushing the free ride envelope. Freestyle was no longer the sideshow, at least in the surf. The racing scene progressed slowly until Kawi introduced the SXR. Kawi killed it with the SXR on the buoy course and within a year regained Industry Domination, at least in racing. Yamaha still had its hard core following of free riders in freestyle area though but this was slowly changing as aftermarket hulls where beginning to catch on. Top freestyle competitors realized that future of freestyle was aerials, but they couldn't get the height needed for the big tricks like they could in the surf so the focus turned to ultra light aftermarket hulls most of which were SJ splashes with light materials and tweaked out motors to try and maximize performance through Power to weight ratios. The real turning point was when Eric Malone, the reigning champ showed up with a completely aftermarket design (As I recall it was an Octane/SXR hybrid looking thing) and through down the first straight up flat-water back flip. Everyone's jaws dropped just like they did years before when Rick Roy first did it in the surf.

Most of you were around by then and know the rest of the progression of the sport. Who knows where the sports going to go now, it almost seems like we've reached a level in performance that can't really be surpassed, but that's what we all though back in the day when we saw the first person do a sub on a ski.
 
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TOBY

TOBY

BNA
Location
NashVegas
When i could run my maxed out limited superjet in the mod class and still win.
And the tech sticker was a (bud dry) sticker
and you could racr every weekend withenn 200miles
 
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