If you have a keen interest in all wake sports, then there’s a good chance that you may already know a little bit about the history of wakeboarding. However, if you have not yet discovered how this particular sport came to exist, then here is a brief history of the background to wakeboarding.
Wake boarding originally developed out of the popularity of snowboarding, which arose in the late 1980s and was first known as snowboarding. Wake boarding, on the other hand, was originally known as ’skurfboarding’. This sport was first developed in Scotland by extreme sports professional, Lochlan Snowie. After lending his ’skurfboard’ to friends in Australia, more began to be manufactured in Queensland. By 1983, however, Florida had also caught on to the idea of wake boarding, and a wakeboards were being manufactured by mounting windsurfing foot straps to customised surfboards.
At the same time, Australian surfboard shaper and inventor Bruce McKee launched the very first mass-produced plastic ‘Skurfboard’, along with his associate, Mitchell Ross. The pair aimed to revolutionise the concept of what we now call wake boarding, much in the same way as the introduction of the racquet greatly changed the game of tennis, or sites such as Partypoker; were to have a significant impact on traditional games such as poker. They did this by making key changes to the design of the board itself. The innovative design meant that they were grated two patents – one for a basic adjustable binding system, and the other for their adjustable plate type foot strap.
However, this sport was still known as ’skurfing’ until the term ‘wake boarding’ was coined by brothers, Paul and Murry Fraser, along with a professional snowboarder whom they sponsored. Along with several others, they began to work on the evolution of the wake board throughout the 1990s. Wake boarding was later added as a competitive sport in the X Games, and The World Skiboard Association was re- named the World Wake board Association.
