The season has officially started on US soil.  We had the Wake Games in Orlando at OWC again this year.  I was pretty excited to ride and see how I measured up against everyone else.  A lot of people, including myself, have been training hard this year winter and I assumed this would be a hard year for competing.  Everyone is killing it!  I ended up winning my qualifying heat, and making it to the quarterfinals.  Everyone who made it to riding on the weekend was chosen for “Teams”.  This is a way for the younger riders to feel more involved with the event and everyone gets to “root” for each other.  Saturday brought the quarterfinals.  It was a bit windy but not too bad.  I was in a heat with Rathy and Robby Carter. I ended up 2nd in this heat behind rathy and both of us moved on to the semis.  Saturday night then brought the Out Of The Pond premiere, along with my fiancée’s surprise b-day party!  The movie was awesome, it was really filmed well, all the boys had killer sections, I’m excited to get a copy and watch it a few times on a dope TV!

Sunday was semis and finals.  I was in the 2nd heat of the day, first off the dock.  There were heats of 4 and only 1 went to the finals.  I decided earlier that I was going for the win!  I was going to attempt a harder run that I’d been doing and try to make the finals.  This plan backfired and I ended up rushing my tricks and kind of falling apart.  It’s all good though; I now learned to stick with what’s working during the weekend.

Sunday night then was box of fun premiere / my birthday / celebrating Rusty winning the contest.  The movie also was good, very different than most wakeboard movies.  You’re going to have to watch it to understand.

Now I’m sitting in my kitchen planning my next trip, stop #2 of the WWA World Series, Brazil!


Kyle Rattray