2024 will be the 10th edition of the San Gervasio ProAm (image: Brescia Today)
By RTB
2 minute play
In this quiz, you need to name every skier, both men and women, to have won the San Gervasio ProAm since the inaugural event in 2014.
The professional slalom tournament, now in its 10th edition, is the longest-running professional event in Europe. The list includes 11 skiers, all of whom have won the title at least once. We’ve provided the skiers’ country and the years of their first and last title as a hint. Good luck!
Things have come a long way since April 2021, when the Waterski Pro Tour unveiled a new website and social media campaign to promote professional water skiing. At that time, water skiing, along with many other professional sports, was still reeling from the impact of a global pandemic, which restricted international travel, event attendance, and sponsorship opportunities.
Today, 1,145 days later, the Waterski Pro Tour is in its fourth season and has heralded a blossoming of slalom events across North America and Europe. In 2024, the Tour is expanding even further with its first-ever event in Africa – the K1000 Marrakech Pro.
The picturesque city in Northern Africa will host the world’s best slalom skiers from June 19-20, kicking off a run of four professional tournaments in less than two weeks that will see the world’s best travel to Morocco, France, Monaco, and Spain in rapid succession.
Vincent Stadlbaur, who is organizing the event alongside Hicham and Kamil Belmrah, shared that the goal of the tournament is for the athletes to have a great time both on and off the water, aiming to make the event as festive as possible and giving the skiers an opportunity to experience the local culture.
Expanding into a new continent is a significant step for the Waterski Pro Tour, which has proliferated in North America and Europe but has yet to take hold anywhere else until now. Speaking on the incredible growth of the Waterski Pro Tour since its inception, Stadlbaur attributes much of this to a “snowball effect.” With a few core tournament organizers showing others what is possible, they inspire others to follow suit.
“Events are more and more filled with high-level competition, which inspires other event organizers,” shared Stadlbaur. The TWBC President also emphasizes the value webcasts can add by broadcasting events to a wider audience, providing a greater value proposition for sponsors.
The K1000 Marrakech Pro, a midweek event, will be live on Wednesday and Thursday morning for the American audience, potentially offering better fan engagement for those busy skiing themselves at the lake each weekend.
In the women’s event, Jaimee Bull will have the opportunity to pull away to an early lead in the season standings in the absence of veterans Regina Jaquess and Whitney McClintock Rini. However, expect stiff competition from the likes of Allie Nicholson, Manon Costard, and Venessa Vieke.
On the men’s side, all four individual event winners so far in 2024 will be vying for dominance in what is shaping up to be one of the most competitive fields in over a decade.
Regardless of the results, Stadlbaur sees the event as a success story, marking important progress in the Waterski Pro Tour’s mission to promote water skiing across the globe.
Joel Poland and Hanna Straltsova won the men’s and women’s jumping titles, respectively, on Saturday at the 7th Louisiana Night Jam, presented by Tides Medical, at Tri-Lakes in Zachary, La. Some of the world’s top men’s and women’s professional water ski jumpers competed in the tournament.
Poland (Great Britain) won the men’s event with a distance of 230 feet in the finals. Freddy Krueger (Winter Garden, Fla.) finished second with a distance of 227 feet after earning the top seed for the finals with a distance of 235 feet in the preliminary round.
The second slalom competition of the 2024 Waterski Pro Tour took place at the weekend at Lake 38, just outside Tallahassee in north Florida.
The men’s field, in particular, was somewhat depleted – Nate Smith, Will Asher, Thomas Degasperi and Dane Mechler were all absent. However, the scores across the three rounds were evidence of the breadth of talent currently on display in pro skiing, with the victory going to a skier taking his first professional title. The women’s competition was a little more predictable with the top three skiers all regulars on the podium and all previous winners at Lake 38.
The Swiss Pro Slalom is always eagerly anticipated – the first professional contest of the season for most competitors and a chance to test out their early form. But what we experienced at the 10th anniversary edition of the event at Florida’s Swiss Waterski Resort, was something very special and a fitting way to start the 2024 Waterski Pro Tour’s series of slalom competitions.
A stacked field, including veterans and a host of new kids on the block, kept us entertained through two preliminary rounds and finals, all packed into one day. By the end, we had witnessed more than a few shocks, crowned a new champion and seen a glimpse of the future of professional slalom skiing.
British skiers took all three podium spots at the Swiss Pro Slalom held in the USA on Sunday 5th May.
It is the first time GB athletes have swept the board on the Waterski Pro Tour and they did so in the first slalom competition of the 2024 Tour, held at the Swiss Waterski Resort in Clermont, Florida.
The winner was Will Asher, whose 4 buoys at 10.25 metres in the first of two preliminary rounds, was the highest score of the day. As the last skier off the dock in the 8-man final, he did just enough to win, scoring 3.5@10.25m.
Earlier in the final, Will’s cousin, Rob Hazelwood, and Joel Poland both scored 3@10.25m but Rob took second ahead of Joel by virtue of his superior back up score.
