Barefoot Worlds Kick Off on Saturday

The 2010 Barefoot Worlds kick off this coming Saturday at the Beetzsee Rowing Course in Brandenburg-an-der-Havel near Berlin, Germany. The rowing course has seats for 5,000 spectators and has held as many as 10,000 people. The event runs from Saturday, August 7th thru Sunday, August 15th. Now I’ve never been to Berlin or Germany, but I know lots of people who have, and everyone of them says you can have a ton of fun over there. Plus, they are bound to have some really good beer, and of course really good beer gardens.

By now, many of the participants are likely there, on their way there, or about to leave. To everyone, I wish you all save travels, and of course, good luck in the event.

I’ve read through some of their newsletters (yep, they send them to me) and they are expecting huge crowd for the event, which will be awesome to see for a barefoot tournament.

I’ll do my best to cover the event from 4400 miles away, but I will admit to a conflict on the final weekend of the event… I’ll be competing in the National Show Ski Championships, so my ability to keep close tabs on the event will be hampered that final weekend, but I’ll still do my best. I’ll use the full resources of the interweb to cover the event. There is the significant time difference from there to here, so hopefully I’ll be able to use that to my advantage.

And if you happen to be heading over there and want to be a correspondent for Tales from the Foot, let me know by sending an email to wedge [at] talesfromthefoot.com. Or if you just a picture or two, send them my way.

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Glen Mueller Figure-8 Story

Barefoot Ski Dot Com has posted their full story about the Glen Mueller Annual Figure-8 Barefoot Tournament with more details on what went down, who beat who, and how the Porn Star came out on top. It also includes complete current standings of the Figure-8 Barefoot Series.

Be sure to head over there for all the details and more great pictures like this one…

Chris McWatters does his best Superman impression

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US Nationals Results

In now somewhat old news that has been published everywhere*, Keith St. Onge and Elaine Heller won their respective Open Pro Divisions, both sweeping the titles in slalom (19.7 and 13.4), trick (12,450 and 3060) and jump (84 feet and 61 feet) (respectively).

For more scores, you can check out the full USA Water Ski Press Release and at least for the time being, you can find all of the scores here (via the ABC website).

On a related note, I did get to watch a little bit of the webcast of this event that the World Barefoot Center did. Not the slickest production I’ve seen, but they are aware of that and are working on making it better (when I watched, there was a kid posing in the background). Yes, there were a couple small technical hick-ups, but nothing major. What I did like was the live feed from the boat to show each person’s runs. You could see exactly what the judges could see with a view right from the boat. I was only able to watch for a little bit on Saturday morning and watched a 82 year old and 75 year old do their trick runs. (I hope I’m still able to barefoot at their ages.) Swampy did a good job describing what he was seeing, estimating their scores, describing why somethings counted and why some didn’t. I give MAD PROPS to the WBC for making this happen. I’m sure they made countless peoples’ days by enabling them to watch their friends and family compete at Nationals. I can’t wait to see what they do next time.

*everywhere that publishes barefoot water skiing results
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Manitowish Water’s Midwest Open Figure 8 Barefoot Tournament

Here are the details for the upcoming Manitowash Waters tournament:

It’s that time of the year again! We are holding the Manitowish Waters Midwest Open Figure 8 on August 7th and Rest Lake Beach. This year should be another great year.We are hoping to pay out more than last year. If I remember correctly, 1st place in open received $1000. There will be Open, Seniors, Women’s and Juniors all with great payouts. Registration will start at 7:30 am skiing will start at 9 am. We will have food, raffles and great skiing so come on down.

If you want more details, check out the event on Facebook. That’ll also be the best place to get your questions answered.

And if you’re keeping count, there are 3 figure-8 tournaments in August now. This one, Footstock in Crandon, WI and the Clean Lakes Festival Barefoot Challenge in Madison, WI. And they are all on different dates (talk about planning!)

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1993 Barefoot Nationals

Old school videos keep showing up on the internet and making their way to my inbox. Here’s the Men’s Open footage from the 1993 Bareboot Nationals featuring footing by Don Mixon Jr, Lane Bowers, Jon Kretchman and Rick Powell. And yes there is some sweet wetsuits in the video…

1993 Barefoot Nationals [video]

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Glen Meuller Annual Figure-8 Barefoot Tournament Results

The Glen Meuller Annual Figure-8 Barefoot Tournament was held this past weekend on Lake St. Louis and the results are (via Barefoot Ski Dot Com):

  1. Marc “Porn Star” Donahue
  2. Greg Fatla
  3. Jacob Weber
  4. JJ Link

Barefoot Ski Dot Com plans to post  a full story soon, so keep an eye on their site.

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Footstock is Coming Up Aug 21-22

The granddaddy of figure-8 tournaments is a little less than a month away now. I don’t know if it is the oldest figure-8 tournament, but it is definitely one of the biggest. I haven’t seen a new promo video for the tournament, but did run across this old one.


1991 Footstock Promo Video [video]

Want more details about Footstock, check out their Facebook page. It seems to have the most up to date details.

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A Small Exclusive

One of my regular readers and contributors, SacFooter (229 videos and counting on YouTube), recently had the opportunity to foot with David Small out at Diablo Shores in Brentwood, CA after their regional tournament. David stuck around for a few days to do some clinics and SacFooter attended one of them. His comments about David: “Super Cool, GREAT instructor and a lot of fun to be around.”

And As SacFooter always does, he shot a lot of video and put together this exclusive video for Tales from the Foot of David Small doing some footing. It features all 3 primary barefoot events with a whole lot of tricks, some solid slaloming and some inverted jumps.


David Small in Brentwood, CA [video]

Thanks for the video Roy!

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Nationals are being Webcast

Like a whole lot of other water skiing events, this year’s Barefoot Nationals are being webcast. I haven’t had a chance to watch this webcast yet, but wanted to remind everyone that it is out there. You just need to go to the World Barefoot Center website (run by KSO and Small) to view it. Be sure to check it out.

Webcast Link => World Barefoot Center

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Barefoot Circles

Back in ‘the day’ all of the barefoot circles you’d see in a ski show were BIG. Lately, they’ve grown a little smaller so they can both keep the action in front of the audience and say they did 5, 6 or 7 circles.

Me, I’m still impressed when teams go big. Even more impressed when they go multiple boats. Here’s a video of the Must-Skis of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin doing both.

Barefoot Circles [video]

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