But one thing is true, the more spectacular the tricks that are being attempted, the more spectacular the falls can be. So here are the likes of KSO, Small, Groen and many others at the WBC showing the world they are indeed human in this video that the WBC put together.

Barefoot Crashes and Smashes [video]

I like the one where the guy backfoots into the weeds.

Glen Plake, an extreme downhill skier innovator, recently visited Keith St. Onge at the World Barefoot Center to do some barefooting. Be sure to read the whole story on Chicago Now.

Karen Putz (previously featured here) attended a did a story for Chicago Now. Be sure to read it and check out all of the pictures. There are also links to her personal blog in the story with even more details from the week.

The entry fee is $65 with registration starting at 7am, the skiers meeting at 730am and the tournament starting at 8am. The tournament will pay out $1000 for first place, $500 for second and $200 for third.

Typical figure-8 rules that follow the Footstock rule book with the exception of the ropes being on a standard tower. No duct tape or Ultimate Grip Clinchers or Masterline Pro Lock gloves.

Seeing as how it’s at the WBC, you’ll likely be competing against KSO, David Small and the rest of the staff from there.

A party will follow at 7:30pm at the WBC Headquarters located at 3915 Lake Conine Dr. East in Winter Haven and the flyer indicates FREE BEER!!!

Check out the WBC website for more details and contact info. It’s also the final stop on barefoot ski dot com’s Figure-8 Barefoot Series.

Click on the image below to embiggen the flyer…

Update 9/25/2010: The figure-8 tournament will be held on Lake Silver now. My understanding it’s a private lake so there won’t be any weekend warriors to deal with.

The first one features Jeremy Petrie (right) against Luke Bruckner (left) as Jeremy fights to maintain his grip on the handle, re-gripping it many times. Luke wins and goes on to take 6th. Jeremy wins 8th. There’s a lot of re-gripping going on. This video starts after they already made one eight.

Footstock – Jeremy Petrie vs Luke Bruckner [video]

The next features Dan Ehlers, who is hailed as the comeback story of the year at Footstock, who after 21 years took 4th place, versus Keith St Onge, one  of the world’s very best barefooters.

Footstock – Dan Ehlers vs Keith St Onge [video]

First place went to Mark “The Porn Star” Donahue who beat the legend Peter Fleck in a record breaking 5-1/4 Figure-8s’s to take the title of 2010 Footstock Champion! Earlier in the day, Fleck had beaten Donahue to become the last undefeated footer, putting Donahue into the loser’s bracket.

Rounding out the top three was Keith St Onge. Dan Ehllers took fourth, Chris Van Zeeland took fifth, Luke Brukner took sixth and Josh Bruns took seventh.

The last four unbeaten footers were Van Zeeland (he put KSO in to the loser’s bracket), Ehllers, Donahue and Fleck.

Based on the Facebook Status Updates provided by Gary Mueller on the Footstock page, it sounds like Donahue beat KSO with a run longer than 4-1/2 fig-8s to advance to the finals. He then had to beat Fleck twice. The first run was the record breaking 5-1/4 fig-8 and the second run was 3-1/2 fig-8s. Counting all of those fig-8′s up, the Porn Star did 13-1/4 figure-8′s to beat two of the best barefooters in the world.

In the Seniors Division, Peter Fleck took first, Mark Donahue took second and The Mule, Bob Mahnke, took 3rd.

In the Junior Division, Sam Landgraf took first, Nich Ruchti took second, Jake Wiedemeier took third, Jake Smith took fourth and Blake Pluemer took fifth.

Elaine Heller took 1st in the Women’s Division. And from the sounds of it, there were more than a couple pink shirts handed out in the Open Division.

If I’ve made any mistakes, please let me know and I’ll get the story updated. If you have video, pictures, whatever, let me know, I’d like to get it out to the barefooting world.

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

I can’t find a source to back this up, but I remember seeing a USA Water Ski post go through my RSS reader about Keith St. Onge winning gold at Worlds and I know he also won gold at Nationals as well as set a pending trick record. (article)

Here’s a link with all of the Nationals results.

Finally… a little teaser. Keep an eye on here for a pretty sweat barefoot video (or two) coming soon. Camera work kinda sucks and the view point isn’t that great, but the trick is more than kick ass and makes up for the poor camera work and bad perspective.