News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Center Hill Lake will play host to a wakeboarding competition that brings some of the nation’s best to the Upper Cumberland this weekend.
The water sport features riders towed by a motorboat across its wake allowing the rider to perform aerial maneuvers. Pates Ford Media Manager Jeff Eslick said the best wakeboarders are some of the best athletes in the world.
“They’re doing tricks like they are gymnast, and I think a lot of these trained like gymnasts and I know a lot of the female riders are gymnasts in nature,” Eslick said. “And so they’ve already got an understanding of flipping, twisting, and turning. They are just applying it to a surfboard-type apparatus behind a boat with a big wave and doing it on the water.”
Eslick said people who wakeboard tend to move at 20-30 miles per hour and can be launched up to 10-15 feet in the air. Eslick said Center Hill provides a unique wakeboarding experience.
“Center Hill is not ideal in the fact that there isn’t a drive-up beach area,” Eslick said. “But in a way that’s really what makes it better. They did this event at another place and it was the people that drove up that tended to be the more wild we’ll just say, so I think with people having to be cognisent of driving back to where they got keeps people more in line.”
Eslick said Wakefest brings some stiff competition containing a majority of the top 25 wakeboarders in the world. Eslick said more people come from outside the United States, than locally.
The marina has hosted Wakefest since 2012. The marina works with the World Wakefest Association to host the event every year. Eslick said Wakefest has competitions for anyone ages five to 20 and up.
“It’s great,” Eslick said. “You see these kids that are less than 10 years old giving everything they got out there and then they get to stand on the podium just like the big guys and the big women from around the globe.”
The event begins Friday.
