A group of footers from around the world gathered in Eau Claire, Wisconsin this past summer to some serous footers. The list of footer includes the De Villiers, Chris Morrison, and Keith St. Onge. In addition to the names you’d know, the video also features Brady Guth, Kyle Erickson and Luke Dallagrana.
Enjoy…
Keith St Onge – 2009 World Barefoot Open Champion
The results of the Men’s Open Finals have been posted on the Australian Barefoot Water Ski Club’s website now and here are the final standings for Men’s Open:
You can view the full results here.
The Women’s Open results are final as well and here are the standings:
Heinrich Sam, a young and very talented barefooter from South Africa, took a footing set with Andre to try a little free style barefooting.
It starts off with what is probably a typical Heinrich pass. For those that don’t know, he’s a pretty good barefooter of some reknown. At the ripe old age of 17, he has already set some European Junior and Open trick records. The kicker is he is just as good as barefooter now, if not better, after he has survived a bout with cancer.
After his initial trick run to warm up, he lines up next to the boat to try some freestyle. His freestyle isn’t as polished as Andre’s yet, but I’m sure it’ll get there soon. Enjoy the video from BFC…
You can find the video on BFC’s South African Barefoot scene page here. In the video section on that page, it is called “Heinrich shows his Freestyle Talent”.
This video does come with a little warning. They do a boat to boat exchange of footers on the boom. Please don’t try this without excellent drivers and some serious confidence in the other footer’s ability. The results could be bad without 4 very competent people (2 drivers and 2 footers). Be sure to be comfortable with all 4 peoples’ skill level for that trick.
BTW, be sure to watch till the very end. Heinrich tries some overhead 3’s on the boom. Fun to watch, looks like it might hurt, but he bounces right back up… literally.
Back in the beginning of October, the following question was posed on the BFC forums:
These guys (the De Villiers brothers) are always trying new things so there would have to be some great spills. How about a video of that? It would just be nice to see a human side to these guys?
Well, it appears that Chuck has changed his mind. On the eve of the election, this new video came up on the website.
You can find the video on BFC’s Video page here. It’s titled “I Fell Down”.
Chuck’s rational for not showing the wipeouts is that he’s trying to encourage people to barefoot and doesn’t want to show the painful side of it. But guess what, unfortunately pain is a part of the sport of barefooting. It doesn’t need to be a big part of it, but even people that are learning the basics, they want to see that even the great footers fall down and go boom when they are trying new things. Plus, if they don’t see the pros struggling to learn new things, new people can become frustrated when they don’t get it as quick as these guys do.
So thank you for the video of the wipeouts, even if they do just tumble up about half the time, which is really just sickening.
BTW, no I did not start that thread.
Once again, there is a video on BFC to get new tricks approved. I’m not sure I understand what they are trying to accomplish. As I mentioned before, it sounds like the tricks need to be submitted to the WBC, not just posted online, crossing your fingers, hoping that the council will find it. It was also requested that the video show the tricks long line and this one spends the better half of the video showing them on the shortline on the boom. If the De Villiers really want their new tricks approved, I (personally) don’t think they are going about it in the right way.
Here’s the video, judge for yourself…
Yes, another BFC video. And it’s another one with Zane and Andre. Not a whole lot new in the way of tricks, but they decided to play with a whole new camera angle to video from. Camera work needs to be improved a little bit, but it’s a whole new perspective and it’s pretty slick. Curious to see how the did this sometime, but enjoy the new view…
…Any Limits!
Yes, another week, another BFC video of Andre de Villiers doing more crazy stuff next to the boat. I wonder what their thought process is for dreaming some of this stuff up?
Hmmm, how can we get more air we jump out of the boat at 40+ MPH? Trampoline… let’s give it a whirl. Have someone throw us out of the boat… sounds like fun.
We already doing some slick slides at the end of our runs, what can we do to have more fun on those? How about after we start sliding, we stand up and try to foot again, or maybe just try to jump… that might work.
And then we try some other crazy stuff.
Time for you to check out their new video…
I promise to find something about barefooting to post about that isn’t based on something that is over at BFC, but this is a topic that I want touch base on.
New tricks.
Although people have come up with some slick new tricks, of which a ton of video is floating around on the net, it seems that the the WBC (the World Barefoot Council) only recognizes tricks that have been sent in to them for review for being officially recognized and having point values assigned. It seems some people find this to be unfair, or maybe, too much of a hassel to go through. They think that, hey there is video of it on the web, it should be recognized. How many points will it be worth? (You can read more of this discusssion over on this thread at BFC).
Foot (a WBC member) laid out the process… send a video of the tricks being done long line to the council and then the council will review them. The council isn’t going to come look at videos on BFC to search out new tricks.
Now people are asking why the council isn’t going to look at videos on BFC? Well, I’m guessing because the current process calls for the videos to be sent to them. Plus, the council can’t be expected to search out new videos on the web looking for new tricks to add. Why? Because popular websites are going to have an easy time getting their tricks recognized. A little one person website that posts new tricks probably isn’t going to be found, and the trick not reviewed. It just isn’t a realistic process to go through.
Now maybe the WBC might need to update their process to recognize video links submitted to them, which I think would be fair. Levels the playing field. But expecting members to find them on their own accord is not a fair expectation for them.
Well, the people running BFC posted a video of new tricks they want considered, put it right on their front page, and asked WBC members to look at it. Not sure if this will be enough to get them approved, but they are trying.
There’s been some debate about what exactly is freestyle barefooting… while here’s AN answer. You see the Andre and Zane DeVilliers and Chris Morrison do some pretty sweet tricks, including hitting the ramp and doing more than your standard barefoot jumps. Nothing we haven’t see before, but it’s nice to see them try this stuff out on something less than perfect glass water. Granted they still had excellent conditions, but not the glass you see them do this stuff on all the time.
This is kinda of an uninspired video from BFC… not a whole lot new in this one, and there isn’t a lot of footing either. They go shopping for “cowboy” clothes and hats, do a little footing in what looks like just swim trunks and cowboy hats, but if you look closely, you can see barefoot shorts under their trunks. So if you’re excited to see guys go barefooting with cowboy hats, enjoy…
Mad-City Wedge 