According to the YouTube clip, it is 7 minutes and 49 seconds of barefooting around tight corners and through rollers.
Here’s the boat footage of Mark Donahue beating Peter Fleck in the record 5-1/4 figure eights at the 2010 Footstock Open Division held in Crandon, WI on Peshtigo Lake. This forced them both to foot again to decide the championship!
Based on the multitude of posts showing up on my Facebook News Feed, I’m pretty sure these are official…
First place went to Mark “The Porn Star” Donahue who beat the legend Peter Fleck in a record breaking 5-1/4 Figure-8s’s to take the title of 2010 Footstock Champion! Earlier in the day, Fleck had beaten Donahue to become the last undefeated footer, putting Donahue into the loser’s bracket.
Rounding out the top three was Keith St Onge. Dan Ehllers took fourth, Chris Van Zeeland took fifth, Luke Brukner took sixth and Josh Bruns took seventh.
The last four unbeaten footers were Van Zeeland (he put KSO in to the loser’s bracket), Ehllers, Donahue and Fleck.
Based on the Facebook Status Updates provided by Gary Mueller on the Footstock page, it sounds like Donahue beat KSO with a run longer than 4-1/2 fig-8s to advance to the finals. He then had to beat Fleck twice. The first run was the record breaking 5-1/4 fig-8 and the second run was 3-1/2 fig-8s. Counting all of those fig-8’s up, the Porn Star did 13-1/4 figure-8’s to beat two of the best barefooters in the world.
In the Seniors Division, Peter Fleck took first, Mark Donahue took second and The Mule, Bob Mahnke, took 3rd.
In the Junior Division, Sam Landgraf took first, Nich Ruchti took second, Jake Wiedemeier took third, Jake Smith took fourth and Blake Pluemer took fifth.
Elaine Heller took 1st in the Women’s Division. And from the sounds of it, there were more than a couple pink shirts handed out in the Open Division.
If I’ve made any mistakes, please let me know and I’ll get the story updated. If you have video, pictures, whatever, let me know, I’d like to get it out to the barefooting world.
…but it’s not. You’ll need to read all the way to the end to find out why.
First, lets look at some behind the scenes footage of the Red Bull Depth Charge. Now you’re asking, what’s that? Well, it was the world’s first UNDERGROUND wakeboard event. They used a mine from 1864 that had since flooded with a whole lot of water, installed some features and put up some lights and whala, they had themselves a wakeboard course set about 120 feet below the surface of the earth.
Next up is the Dew Tour Mastercraft Wakeboard Rail Jam. One would think they’d hold a wakeboard event in a lake, right? Even in the Red Bull Depth Charge they were in a lake, granted is was underground, but still, it was a lake. The Rail Jam, they held it in a parking lot… on pavement… and built some really big pools. And by big pools, I mean ginormous (gigantic * enormous = ginormous) pools. In word, they were big. But not so big that if they jumped too high or too far, they might just hit pavement. Be sure to watch this one to the end because they managed to find a guy to explain everything for you.
By now you’re wondering why are there two wakeboarding videos posted here on a barefoot site? One might be OK, but two? Seriously? [just watched me some SNL] Well, both of these events had one Mr Peter Fleck involved in the planning of them. Who’s Peter Fleck? This guy…
That is Peter Fleck as he appeared some 26 years ago. It’s also this guy…
He’s had a lengthy career as a barefooter, skied professionally in ski shows and has even competed at Footstock in recent years. He also helped plan both the Depth Charge and Rail Jam events. In addition to everything he’s done on the water, he’s done a lot of stuff off the water to help promote the sport of water skiing and all is various disciplines, even wakeboarding. Here’s the video that was played at the Wisconsin Water Ski Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2009. It highlights some of the things he’s done both on and off the water.
Hopefully you’ve taken the nearly 30 minutes to read this short article and watch these three videos. Two highlight some spectacular water ski events and one highlights a truly spectacular water skier who helped make those events happen.
Mad-City Wedge 