International Water Ski Racing Online Since 1996

2009 World Water Ski Racing Championships Start Today

If you’ve been following the updates on Twitter, Facebook or the right hand side of skirace.net, you will know that the opening ceremony took place yesterday and then a number of teams hit the small piece of water in Gent where the first round of the Worlds takes place today – Sunday 19th July.

The whole event kicked off with controversy over the length of the new Bernico boats. The outcome is that all boats will be allowed to race and of course one camp is happy with this and another is not.

The weather forecast is for some rain with 15-19’c. Watching practice yesterday, it didn’t take long for half a dozen boats to whip up the water which is slightly wider than Viersel but still very limited in width and length. The likes of Pete Proctor, Wayne Mawer and others were doing practice laps in just over 2.5 minutes so the laps are small. 30+ boats in the Mens is going to create some horrendous conditions that will test every team to the limit. The walls on the side of the canal are vertical so there are no opportunities for any washes to subside.

I shall be doing race commentary but I shall also send out a number of updates during each race via Twitter. As I mentioned above, those updates appear on my Facebook profile, Twitter and on the right hand side of this web site. Whatever I publish on Twitter will be live and up to the minute – helping you stay in tune with what’s happening. If you are following the Twitter feed on the right side of this web page, you need to keep refreshing your page page so you get any new Twitter posts.

Roger Lincoln will be making video’s of racing and interviews and all going well, a 30 minute video will be published after each race day. There are a couple of people taking photos and they will let me know when new shots are available online.

The only time I can use a laptop is at the end of a day’s racing back at the hotel so aside from a daily post which looks like this one that you’re reading, the best way to stay up to date is via my Twitter updates.

I hope you enjoy a taste of the 16th Worlds, from wherever you’re watching from.

Race times are here

Robbie Llewellyn

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