Following in the Wake(Board)

If you're a wakeboarder, or have just seen wakeboards on the water and wondered about their origins, you may have wondered if they are a direct descendant of the surfboard. While wakeboards have a complicated history, in the simplest sense, they do have ancestors in surfboards.

Wakeboards, as you may know, are boards towed behind skiboats. Rather than water skiing, the wakeboarder rides the board, feet strapped to the board and rope in hands. Wakeboarding is a very popular sport, and has a very short history.

For years, surfers would grab a roe and allow a boat to pull them, or have a vehicle on the shoreline tow them along the edge of the water or even in an overflowing ditch. Because traditional surfboards were not particularly suitable for this kind of towing, shorter boards were developed just for this activity, and more surfers began riding towed boards.

Around 1984, surfer Tony Finn developed a board called the Skurfer. The Skurfer resembled a small surfboard, and was specifically designed for towing behind a ski boat. The original Skurfer did not have straps, and the rider was free to stand anywhere on the board. Rider movements were limited, but the experienced Skurfer rider was able to do moves similar to surfing moves, moving from side to side of the wake.

The Skurfer birthed the sport of skiboarding, and in 1990, ESPN broadcast the first Skurfer championships. While the sport was popular with some experts, the boards' shape made them difficult for amateurs and new skiboarders to use. Light, thick and narrow, the boards were very hard to get up on, and skiboarding never really caught on.

Shortly thereafter, Herb O'Brien took an interest in the idea. Owner of H.O. Sports, O'Brien worked with some of the surfing world's best board shapers, based in Hawaii, to create the first wakeboard. The Hyperlite was compression-molded with neutral buoyancy, which made it easy for anyone to use. While the name skiboarding didn't completely evaporate for a few days, wakeboarding was on its way. The Hyperlite had far superior bindings and was much easier to use because of its neutral buoyancy, and almost anyone could make easy starts, both in deep water and from the dock.

Other companies followed H.O. Sports in creating wakeboards, and the more competition there was to build a better board, naturally, the better the boards got. The surfboard shape was replaced by “twin tail” wakeboards, allowing the rider to center himself in a steady stance. As the shape of the board evolved, the sport evolved right along with it, and has grown by leaps and bounds.

Like any sport, wakeboarding developed. In 1990 Jimmy Redmon founded the World Wakeboarding Association, the sport's governing body. World Sports & Marketing began holding professional wakeboarding events in 1992. Professional and amateur events abound, and wakeboarding has become a lifestyle, rather than just a sport, for many people looking for a great extreme water sport to get involved in and become part of.