You might have noticed on my other social media platforms that I love to do watersports. It has been something I’ve been doing every summer since my 6th birthday. My parents had plans to open a Waterskipark in Almere, near Amsterdam (cable park Almere.) I liked swimming already so my parents put me on a waterski camp so they could teach me how to do this. If you press on the photo on the left you can see me from my first try on a belt till ski-jumping. It started in 1995, and its something I still love to do. It never seemed to get me bored and it helps me to relieve stress. (video here)
When I started waterskiing, wakeboarding was not a popular sport in the Netherlands. I was confronted with classical waterskiing as you could see in the video (click here). I did this and after 1 year they taught me to kick out one ski. This part in waterskiing is called “Slalom-skiing”. I got a bit better in this and they gave me a couple of “Trick ski’s”. This is what you can see on the picture above. This is tricky, it has almost no stability and makes it difficult to stear to the left and right but easier to spin around. I got better with this as well and they put me on jumpski’s these are 2 normal ski’s but made to go over a ski-jump. I got better in ski-jumping and practiced this but in the same time wakeboarding started to become popular in the Netherlands.
Wakeboarding got so popular that a lot of people started to shift from classical waterskiing (trick,slalom and jumping) to wakeboarding. They started to organize championships in the Netherlands and (because nobody still attended in my class) I won some of the championships wakeboarding behind the boat and cable. I never got much better than that because I became afraid to make big crashes. This fear came from some accident I already had at that time. Let’s just say that I hope I’ll not become bald because my head doesn’t look so nice anymore as before these wakeboard incidents. Wakeboarding became very popular and as I grew older started to give waterski and wakeboarding instructions at my parent’s cable in the summer. On the picture on the right, you can see me waterski on a bucket.
In 2016 my family got together on the cable. The 4 of us for the first time since my parents own that company. My mother is hanging around me because she found it scary to stand on a wakeboard herself with 3 other wakeboarders. I will cherish this moment a lot. It felt very special for me and I hope that we might be able to do it another time but then I’ll bring my GoPro camera with me. Left you can see me on the board and my mother around me, then my father in the middle and on the right-hand side my brother.
In the video below you find a video I’ve made last year. If you pay attention you might even see my face a few times. Or if you visit my youtube page you can find me doing other sports as well.
If you are in the Netherlands please bring us a visit in Almere and be sure to send me a message on this website. I’ll try to come and say “hi” to you and teach you how to wakeboard. www.CableParkAlmere.nl
