Wakeboard
The birth of the wakeboarding dates back to 1985, where a surfer named Tony Finn and the water skiers Jimmy Redmon independently and not knowing each other modified their previous sports equipment. Tony Finn screwed straps (loops to fix the feet) on his surfboard and let hinself pulled by cars and boats. He called his invention the 'Skurfer'. Jimmy Redmon, however, built a so-called "water ski board" in Texas from two water skis and two straps. The most important thing and the common denominator were the Straps (what you know as Wakeboard Binding today) and jumping over the bow wave of a boat - wich is called THE WAKE. Tony Finn´s "Skurfer" was held until the late of 80s without the wished breakthrough. The actual inventor of the sport "Wakeboarding" is the company HO sports of Herb O'Brien, a successful businessman and fhighly experiences Waterski designer and bulider. In the early Nineties he constructed a complete new Board with his unique knowledge of building high performance water skis.
He invented the first "compression-molded neutral-buoyancy wakeboard", the so-called "HYPERLITE". Today, wakeboarding is one of the fastest growing sports like snowboarding, skateboarding and kitesurfing and has developed his own life style, language and open-minded scene.
