You would expect these to be bitter thoughts, because I joined the 1st Singapore Cable wakeboard and wakeskate championship held on 5th January at ski360, in the “Open Wakeskate” category, and I finished last! 
But it was actually quite fun, and even if I did pretty badly, I learned a lot and met new wakeskate riders.
There were only six participants in the wakeskate category, so we had a qualifying run, but we were all making it to the finals anyway (unlike in the other categories, where people had to fight real hard for a place in the finals).
I came 4th out of the qualifiers. We had two runs each, no limits on tricks etc. and the judges were adding the points of both runs for the total score. Repeat tricks were not counted.
For the qualifiers I decided to “play one round safe” by trying only “simple” tricks that I was very confident I would land, and then to go all out for the second round. For the first round I planned to do: crowd waving, slalom, touching the water, straight funbox ridge, straight dragon, then a go at the blue ramp at the end of the run. It all started well, but I failed the landing from the dragon! For my second run, I did surface 180s and wanted to do funbox ridge 360, then try the dragon again and the blue ramp at the end… but I fell on landing the funbox ridge 360.
Not very good… but I still came out 4th with that.
A few hours later was the final, and for the final I decided that since there were only prices for places one to three, there was no point in repeating what had only gotten me 4th place during qualifiers… so I decided to go all out and try my best trick, the funbox ridge 360, on the first run. I failed again. Then I tried it again on my second round, and I failed again. That’s how I ended up last.
Actually, if I had landed the funbox ridge 360 and the dragon, I suspect I would have finished either first or second place… so my tactic wasn’t bad… but the lesson learned is that my riding is just not good enough.
In a competition, you only get one or two runs, no warming up, and you only have that single shot at doing a trick. This means that to use a trick, you really need to know how to do it 100% of the time. During the competition, under pressure, I could not even land my “safest” trick, the dragon, the one that I normally do 9 times out of 10 when not competing. Of course, my 360 on the ridge is even less reliable. You never know, I could get very lucky trying these in a competition… but the more likely outcome is what actually happened: I mess it up and end up with nothing (well, sixth and last place!).
And that is the difference between riders like me and the better ones. Occasionally, you could see us do exactly the same difficult trick. I have fun trying and doing difficult tricks. The difference is that I try 10 times and succeed once. The professional rider tries the trick 100 times and succeeds 99 times. In a competition, that makes all the difference.
It was fun and I’ll try again next year, if I get a chance.
