2008 WORLD BAREFOOT WATER SKI CHAMPIONSHIPS
Qualifying Scores Changed!
The 2008 World Open, Junior, and Senior
Barefoot Championships will be held at the beautiful venue of Lake
Inspiration, Otaki, New Zealand. The dates for this event will be January
25- February 1, 2009.
Please make sure
to join us on placid Lake Inspiration - the name! As
of February 13, 2008 there has been an adjustment made in the qualifying
scores.
Click here
to see the requirements.
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| Towboat Options at the 2008 US Barefoot Nationals
The American Barefoot Club (ABC) today announced the 2008 Barefoot Nationals
Open Skier Towboat selections. In a policy change approved by the ABC Board
of Directors at the Winter Board meeting last month, the selections are
being announced now rather than the previous announcement only weeks before
Nationals. The intent is to allow Open skiers a longer period to plan for
and train on the boats they will ski at Nationals.
In accordance with the changed policy, the ABC counts the number of
events pulled by each boat manufacturer from 1 January to 31 December of the
preceding year (2007) and the manufacturer with the greatest number of events pulled has
first choice in selecting which Open Skier event they want to use to
highlight their boat. The manufacturer with the second highest number of
events pulled gets second choice and so on until all the Open events are
covered. Boat manufacturers submit their prioritized choices as a blind bid.
This year Sanger had the first pick followed by Malibu.
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| New ABC Towboat Manual Approved
The ABC Board of directors at the Midwinter board meeting on January 26,
2008 approved an overhaul of the ABC Towboat Manual. This has now been
incorporated into the current
ABC Rulebook.
If you have questions about these changes please direct them
Mike Hartman who is
the Chairman of the ABC Towboat Committee.
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| ABC Athletes of the Year
(by Dan Cummings) Please join me in congratulating the 2007 ABC Male and
Female Athletes of The Year, Kevin Towers and Elaine Heller. Kevin and
Elaine have represented barefooting in the US this year in different but
fantastic ways. They will each be presented with crystal awards at the
USA-WS Awards Banquet in Polk City, Florida on Saturday, January 26th
following the Winter board meetings of the various sports divisions.
Click Here for more
details.
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| Rachel Normand Tops 2007 World
Barefoot Standing List Rachel Normand - USA,
again tops
Women’s Barefoot World Standing list. The American women had a
strong showing capturing 3 of the top 5 positions. For the first time
in history the 2 South Africans men topped the World Standings List (WSL).
At the top of the
2007 Men’s Barefoot Standing List is Heinrich Sam – RSA followed by Andre De
Villiers – RSA and Keith St Onge – USA.
For all the details on World Barefoot Standing list
click here. This web page will give the
viewer the opportunity to study the results for the past 10 years. This
page includes several different search techniques including:
If you are looking for specific tournament results in
detail and the tournament was held in Region Pan Am and Region AA
you can use the following web pages:
If you have more question about the result just reply
to this email and we will try to answer the question.
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20th Blairfoot Crowns Champions
WINTER HAVEN, Fla. – The 20th annual Blairfoot Bananza World
Barefoot Water Ski Endurance Championships was be held Oct.
13-14 on Lake Silver in Winter Haven, Fla. The event,
founded by "Banana" George Blair, includes the endurance
championships and a head-to-head figure-8 event, with the
combined highest-scoring barefooter being crowned "World
Endurance& Figure 8 Barefoot Champion." Excellent
performance by the 13 year old competitor from the Carolina
Water Ski Show Team. He beat the best in the world in all of
the events and the Overall competition.
Keith St Onge acknowledged to Seth, that he was beaten by a 13 year old
competitor. A great competition and a great time for all of the
competitors and of course the highlight of the tournament was the
camaraderie with Banana George Blair. Click here for all the results
for Saturday,
Sunday and
Overall.
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2007 Lake Elmo Sports Barefoot Nationals Completed
The
2007 Barefoot
National Waterski Championships demonstrated why
Rachael Normand and
Keith St Onge are World Champions. All week the Blue Moo offered smooth
water and great condition until the finals on Saturday. Early in week Keith
St Onge skied a score of 10,150 in tricks and Rachael Norman Slalom a score
of 11.9 to finish in 1st place after the first round. Then came
Saturday, with the temperature in 50’s and raining, the conditions were less
than ideal. Both Open Slalom and Tricks were completed Saturday morning in
the rain and jump was postponed and then canceled due to heavy rain.
This year’s Nationals offered a lot more than just
skiing at the tournament site. The Blue Moo is a private man made located
in a corn field Alma City, Wisconsin. When you get there and see this site
you will be reminded of the movie “A field of Dreams”
“If you build it they will come” This site
offered a lot more than just the tournament for entertainment such as:
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Kevin Towers Milking at the Blue MOO |
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Celebrity Cow milking contest |
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Horseback riding from the site |
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Paint ball games on site |
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ATV trail riding from the lake site |
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A very interesting tour of a modern
dairy farm |
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Blake on the Lake –it was a fund raiser
where Blake Heller would barefoot ski
and spectators would pay to shoot at
him with a paint ball gun. It was
hysterical! |
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Beach Volley Ball and much more |
If you didn’t come this year start making your plan to
ski this site next year! For all the results
click here.
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New Software for Tournament Scoring
The ABC and the majority of the Federations are now moving to new
software for scoring the events. I can be downloaded from the
internet. To requests a copy send an email to
Brian
Heeney One of the new features is scores can be readily accessed
for tournament around the world. The ABC offers scores going back to
1993 and Geoff Davis from Australia-Asia is inputting historical scores from
that region. You can access the scores by the Skier's name or
Tournament Name. To access these scores use the hyperlinks at the top
of the page. The new feature is you can now look up the history for our
officials (judges, drivers, scorer and more). These pages are in the
test phase and can be found at
http://barefoot.org/scores/ We hope you find them help and
if you have questions (in the ABC) please contact
Gary Butler or
Brian
Heeney
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