King Of Cable Results
Princes Club, London – The final event on the cable wakeboard scene in the UK took place Saturday 22nd September, and featured the top UK and European cable wakeboarders vying for the title of King and Queen of Cable 2007.
The competition allows the winner from each age division the opportunity to compete against each other, giving the younger riders a chance to take on the bigger kids! With £1750 in cash and loads of great prizes up for grabs there was lots of interest and we were excited to welcome entrants from Hungary and Holland.
This year saw 60 entrants take to the water, and an ever increasing band of support from the bank. The added spectacle of the Relentless FMX team on their 45 metre gap ramp made it an awesome day out for the crowd. Added to this was the fact that as the only UK site with 2 cables spectators were able to try out their own tricks while the competition was running.
The level of riding was outstanding, even in the most junior division the youngest competitor Connor Floyd (born 2000!) entertained. Jack Battleday pulled out some great tricks, earning himself the chance to compete for cash against the winners of the other male divisions later in the day.
Mayanka Jansen from Holland showed the girls how it was done with an exceptional selection of air tricks. It was a shame that Princes’ own defending champion Victoria Young couldn’t give Mayanka a run for her money due to a sprained ankle. It would have been a sight to see her defend her title against the European girls. Another Princes rider Connor Jones pulled off a storming run in the boys division to head off the other 9 contenders. Connor’s sister Chloe followed up in the junior ladies division beating off fellow competitor Charlotte Hemming from WakeMK.
Next on the dock were the junior men, this division has always been a hard contest as these kids throw it all on the line to win. CK Koester from JBSki went out and pulled off a technically faultless run, which was finished off with a 900 off the kicker putting him in contention for the best trick of the day prize. CK was followed by local rider James Young who was right on his heels with the technical tricks but just couldn’t edge him out. Another Princes hopeful Lewis Cornwall had pole position at the end of Round 1, but was unable to hold his lead with a shock fall just after the 5th corner, handing the 1st place and chance to win the title of King to CK.
It was great to see the women’s division with so many entries this year, and especially pleasing to see such an international start list, with the likes of Kath Moore from Australia and Kinga Horvath from Hungary. Despite being a boat specialist Kath managed to fend off Suzie Clist for 3rd spot, followed by Liu Batchelor who took second and world renowned Kinga took the top spot and went on to take the crown off Tor and a tidy cash prize as Queen of Cable for 2007.
The master’s men division was a hard fought battle between the 11 entrants with Stu Marston just edging out first place qualifier Larry Donaghey to take the title and a brand new X-Box 360. Paul Jones confirmed his family’s stronghold on cable wakeboarding by making it onto the podium (albeit in 3rd place).
Before the last big final of the day the FMX guys had one more show to perform. These guys are nuts – they only had a small area of grass on each side of the jump but still managed to get 45 feet in the air. The more noise the crowd made the harder the guys were trying. This was a great way to get the crowd going and an awesome prelude to the open men’s final.
The reigning monarch Nick Davies was unfortunately out of the competition, as he was busy competing at the world cup in Singapore but this gave some of the other guys a chance to show their stuff. It was great to see an in form Garry Stelfox (South Africa) back after being out last year with a knee injury. He put together a very strong run but fell on his last trick off the kicker. This gave Princes rider Ben Hitch an opening, and he took it with both hands, going big and clean with his aggressive style and landing two 720 spins. This put him in the lead and it was going to take some doing to wrench the top spot off him. That was until fellow Princes Pro Jonty Green hit the water, landing a double S-Bend, a 540 and a 720 spin. This gave the judges something to ponder and it took them some deliberating before they could announce the final results, with Jonty just edging out Ben, closely followed by Garry.
With the light fading fast there wasn’t much time to hang around. The distinctive format of this comp requires the winners of each division to take it out for one last lap to compete for the title of King and Queen. So it was that Chloe, Mayanka and Kinga headed out into the sunset. The two younger girls laid it all down but the more experienced Kinga knew what she had to do to beat them and she made sure of it by standing up her run to take the title and £750 cash.
The battle for King was a tougher one with 5 competitors in total. Jack, Connor and Stuart put on an awesome display and showed that their chance to compete for King was well deserved. However, when CK failed to play his best hand, it left the door wide open for Jonty who knew that all he had to do was stand up his run, land some of his harder tricks and he would walk home with the £1000. So the King Jonty Green and Queen Kinga Horváth were crowned and another great King of Cable comp at Princes Club, London was complete.
We look forward to seeing you all back here for the 2008 comp and hope that we can attract an even wider audience from the international wakeboard community. The event was filmed by Nick & Dom and a trailer will be up on our website www.princesclub.com soon.
Princes Club would like to thank all the competitors, spectators, organisers and judges for making it such a great day. It would not have been possible without the help of our sponsors, so a huge thanks to Relentless, Analog, Oakley, Xbox 360, Vans, Pro-Tec, Gravis, Princes Shop, Innocent Smoothies and Corona.
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