LATROBE CITY INTERNATIONAL STREAMING LIVE

[MattP]

http://goo.gl/E1TpTc

 

The Victorian Water Ski Association and the Latrobe Valley Water Ski Club in partnership with the Latrobe City Council will hold the inaugural LATROBE CITY INTERNATIONAL OPEN to be held on the 19th-20th March 2016

This prestigious Slalom event will be held at the Latrobe Valley Water Ski Club on Lake Narracan Moe - Region of Latrobe Valley, Victoria.

 

Slalom, being an exciting discipline of the sport of water skiing, this event is sanctioned by the International Water Ski & Wakeboard Federation and the Australian Water Ski & Wakeboard Federation, Official Tow Boat is the World Record Holding Ski Nautique 200.

 

 

[Edbrazil]

Also see this link:

 

To see scores posted w/o video.

 

Whitney leads Women SL with 2 @ 10.75.

At 8pm Eastern Daylight time, Men Slalom is just getting going. Some heavy-duty Men

competitors in the field.

[Edbrazil]

Round 1 is over. 4 Men into 10.25, with Winter and Smith both doing 3 @ 10.25.

 

[Horton]

@Edbrazil this America! Feet and inchs please.

 

[eddie_roberts_jr]

Yeah, what Horton said!

[Edbrazil]

OK. Whitney 2 @ 35' 3.23". And 4 men into 33' 7.54".

[MrJones]

You guys have a schedule (CST) when they will be on today?

 

More pics with reply appreciated Horton...

[Horton]

@Edbrazil not helpful

 

@MrJones there is a real schedule somewhere but generally speaking late afternoon our time is morning their time

[MattP]

7PM EST tonight is the start time for Sunday's skiing.

[MrJones]

Thanks Matt! Dinner and skiing. A typical exciting Saturday night at the Jones house.

[MattP]

Webcast is up and skiing should be starting soon.

[Bill22]

I missed most of the webcast. What happened? Are they skiing a third round today?

[ToddL]

just now started back up.

[Bill22]

 

[Jody_Seal]

Congratulations to Freddy Winter and Whitney McClintock winning the inaugural Latrobe open. Very good event. Overcame some cool and wind conditions and the skiers put out some big scores. How about some gate shots from the boat???

 

 

[MrJones]

So the round 3 scores shown above weren't the final standings?

[Bill22]

@MrJones no those scores are before the head to head final.

 

I posted the pic because the IWWF site is a little funny. It only shows you half of the scores unless you click the pdf link to see the full list.

[Edbrazil]

So, where are the actual final results, including the Head to Head?

[MISkier]

This is the closest I found. It doesn't have it in place order, but it does list the final head to head scores. The scoring on the IWWF site for this was odd all weekend.

 

 

[MrJones]

Speaks to the state of "Pro" skiing when you can't even find results on the internet.

[MattP]

@MrJones agreed... I am reaching out to some people for an updated bracket list with scores. The issue with the IWWF-EA site is that it is designed for 3 rounds of skiing. With a H2H final it surpasses its capability. Having someone tweet out scores is always a good way to desalinate information.

[Horton]

I was worried that I was being pushy or sounded arrogant when I wrote this a few years ago. I was wrong.

[TFIN]

Speaks to the state of "pro" skiing?

So, because you didn't watch the live webcast and because you weren't able to find the online scores, Nate Smith's and Will Asher's chosen professions belong in parantheses? Careful guys, you've dedicated a big portion of your lives to this sport also.

[MattP]

A big thanks to @MAD11 and @FWinter for quickly getting back to me with scores tonight when asked while they were traveling! (Unofficial results below. They were given to me via FB & Twitter)

 

 

[Horton]

@TFIN

 

Professional sports exist to provide entertainment and as a marketing tool. Without fans there is no pro-any-sport. You and every other member of the pro skiing community should be concerned when fans want to know what happened and can’t find news. I think there is a real problem at least in terms of event news within the sport.

 

I often have to ask for press releases so I can publish event news. That is unbelievable to me.

 

Bottom line for me is - if the most plugged in fans in water skiing (the Ballers) can’t find the event news then the event sponsors money is a donation to the skiers. Good for Freddy but bad for Pro skiing.

[ozski]

And that IWWF website looks like it was born in 1992... WTF?

[Dirt]

I watched it live. It was great! Thanks for the webcast and great skiing.

[Rpc29]

Crossfit didn't really even exist 10 years ago but I can get up to the minute results from a 99% amateur competition (The Open) on their website at any time. Why aren't we stealing more ideas from these guys? Just go take a look at their YouTube channel, profiles on athletes, footage from events, etc. This isn't rocket science, just smart marketing and video production that an intern could handle if USA Waterski can't afford a real employee.

 

It's some of the little details that hold us back as a sport.

[ALPJr]

IMHO... Love to follow the pro sport. Real good webcast. Almost zero public outreach for many pro events beyond some industry manufacturers websites.

[Freddie Winter]

Alright @Horton, I'll bite. You've caught me at the end of a very long journey back to England with no sleep and I wish I could throw a big, silly laughing panda gif at you.

First off, I really take issue with the use of 'donation'. It's just the wrong word to use because it suggests we as pro skiers are not working hard for any money we can get in the pro game. After all the training hours and flight and accommodation costs that's just obviously not the case. Also, the event was paid for (ie all the prize money) by Latrobe Valley City council, a small Australian town that's big in the energy production industry. I can only speculate as to their motivation for putting it on but there is no doubt to me that is was not to increase the visibility of their city to water skiers in America.

Secondly having a negative attitude towards brand new, first time pro events gets us absolutely nowhere. This is the first year of the event. The pro skiers as a group are really bloody happy that there's another event happening so we can justify the expensive flight over a little bit more. Yes, there wasn't great accessibility of scores after the event. That's a shame and can be improved upon for next year and thereafter (it's fully funded til 2020). There was a webcast with the finest commentator in the world imo. This is better than the World Championships, the most established event in water skiing which had no live video. I had a lot for friends and family watch Latrobe in the middle of the night in the UK, they loved it. We need to be positive with new pro events, putting on tournaments is hard as hell. I'm bloody grateful they did it, with everything else apart from score communication they did a fantastic job.

Having said all that, on the whole I agree with you, we need to do something to centralise information of pro events and make it easily accessible. I've been a ski fan far longer than being a pro skier and I know how annoying it is not to have the info immediately as we are used to in other sports. Who knows, maybe somethings in the post on that front. I know Tom Grey has started proskiers.com which looks like a huge step in the right direction.

Now please all come at me and tell me how wrong I am

[Than_Bogan]

@FWinter You've nailed it. (Again.)

[MrJones]

Along with Dirt, I enjoyed being able to watch part of the web cast. Appreciate all who set it up..

 

Horton and Rpc29 stated my thoughts much more eloquently. +1 on their takes.

 

Tfin. No disrespect to any of the athletes. It's just hard to believe that the day after a professional event in any sport you can't find full results. I'm not talking about a ESPN level story on the event, you can't even get full raw scores. That's not good for the sport or athletes no matter how you look at it.

[Texas6]

Well said @FWinter, in defense of Horton's use of the word "donation," knowing his appreciation and his respect for both the sport & professional skiers, i don't think he meant to take anything away from the hard work of pro athletes; but your point is valid. Furthermore, your defense of the sponsor is warranted, but their is a bigger issue at play here, and that issue has nothing to do with the event or the sponsor in my opinion, but rather the sport itself. Its as though 99.9% of the duties of any event fall on either the ski site, the hosts and friends at the ski sight, the event sponsors, or even the pro skiers to manage. And its amazing that all of that help is available. But at some level, there needs to be a central scoring and event management website for the pro events. That way each and every pro event is advertised in some way (I'm sure the sponsors would appreciate it), anyone who wants to watch an event or a webcast would know where to look to find information on the subject (I'm thankful to bos for this), and any scores at any event can always be found. It wouldn't take much to put this together for the improvement of the sport.

[Horton]

@fwinter

The use of the word “donation” was a bit of hyperbole but let me defend it anyway.

 

Imagine the following - Take off your ski, pull your hair back, put on some business clothes and meet me in the corporate suite. We will meet with any of your sponsors or any of your dream sponsors like RedBull or Aston Martin. We are going to tell them that we are going to put on an event where the fans have a hard time finding the results and where the maximum promotional value of the event was not a high priority. Any prize money they provide would be donation because there is nothing in it for them. That is my point. Pro skiers work their asses off to be the best but the only way to make money is for skiing to be a show and for there to be fans.

 

If I owned a boat or ski company it would be hard as hell to get money out of me to support a Pro Event unless there was sufficient PR and Marketing included. As the rising star in the sport you should make sure everyone knows what happened last weekend. Last weekend was about @Fwinter!

 

Changing tracks there. Congratulations on a good trip down under. I was pretty happy to see Great Britain sweep men’s slalom down under.

 

I am not attacking the Latrobe Valley event organizers and I hope there are not offended by this thread. Yes they should be thanked repeatedly for their efforts and I hope they put on the event every year. My comments are more about elite events in general. The things that bug me about the event last weekend are almost identical many events in water skiing. The first problem to me is that there was no news story or press release in advance of the event. If @MattP was not such a freak about this stuff I might have totally missed putting the webcast on the front page and there might not have been anything in the forum about the event. Maybe @edbrazil or someone else would have posted but there was not any official details. We “The Ballers” could have totally missed the event.

 

As the admin/owner of this site I refuse to surf Facebook or other web sites to find the news and then cut and paste it here. I am long past that. This web site is the news hub for the skiing world and I have to ask for event organizers to send me news? Seriously? I guess in a perfect world I would research and write the news but I aggregate and curate the news - that is how it is.

 

And then there is the whole results thing....

 

 

[Horton]

One more thing.

 

If anyone reads my above post and thinks I am misguided or out of line - I want Pro Skiing to be bigger than it is now. I want to use what influence I have to lift the sport. In the end we all want what is best for water skiing as a whole.

[Horton]

another one more thing... I do get that it is hard. I am going to struggle to get out enough news about the Cash Prize events but I am going to make it a priority.

[Freddie Winter]

@horton and @texas6 totally agree. No way to grow pro water skiing (which would trickle down to water skiing as a whole) and get those bigger sponsors in without first sorting out the communication side of things. Webcasting is a good tool but up to date results and an information hub are just as important, if not more so. Communication is key. So we're on the same page.

Wow, what a lovely productive forum. It's not all bitching and negativity online.

[MrJones]

Whewww. Glad this has turned out with everyone being friendly. My original comment wasn't meant to offend anyone. Just an observation. Glad it stirred up a bit of conversation though!

[Horton]

@MrJones you are always the trouble maker.

[brody]

I watched the web cast when I could and sometimes when I wasn't supposed to (at work). Really enjoyed it and the commentators. I hope to see more web casts in the future. The lack of results in general from different competitions can be frustrating, but I believe it is usually from volunteers so we need to understand. Most sports that have better results are from either bigger sports or paid positions. I for one enjoyed it, congrats to all the athletes AND organizers/officials/volunteers!!!

[jcamp]

Simple: Everyone pay me $50 and I'll guarantee a website with great content and timely updates.

[TFIN]

Now we're talking.

TF

[MAD11]

You guys will all get to see it on I think on FOXTEL and Livestream I think when the editing is done. The entire finals are being shaped into a TV show for the event. We were thrilled that Latrobe City held the event and are extremely thankful they have made a 5 year commitment. We will definitely be back. I'm sure it will get better in the future as far as information goes. I guess I should of been sending out updates during the event. Had plenty of time in the judges tower between skiers to do it, but was listening to the F1 race live during that time so all of you were forgotten on this one. Congrats to @FWinter I almost launched off the scaffolding when he turned 3 ball. Nice job man. By the way, did you get your Master's invite yet or is still some guy named Freddy going in your place?

 

Many of the same group who run the Moomba event helped put this together and were onsite working their butts off. Great attitudes, all about the skiers and building the sport. Maybe we should be taking notes. How do they get small towns to put up cash prizes for 5 years and we can hardly pull together pro event in the USA? I can certainly forgive them for not getting scores out after volunteering at ski events for two straight weeks and look at the positive things they are getting done.

[MrJones]

Glad to hear that Marc. I guess that's what I was getting at. I know from experience how much work goes into hosting a big tournament for all the organizers and volunteers. Then of course there is all the work, time, and money the athletes invest to get there. It seems there must be a better way to expose/report this to the world.

[Freddie Winter]

@MAD11 yeah 'Freddy' is still the only Winter invited to Masters, still waiting for mine. Also last week 'Fred Winter' was 2nd on the Elite list and 'Frederick Winter' was 16th with the moomba points. It's confusing having everyone use my name incorrectly.

[Than_Bogan]

Ok so what *is* your actual name? I will need to know that to begin stalking you...

[skihard]

@FWinter - just end the confusion already! As the youngest Winter in the group I suggest you change your name and not your feature look.

In all my hours of reading through this site I do believe the rest of the seasons are available......Fred Spring, Fred Summer, & heck yes even Fred Autumn! :smile: LOL

Then we would know!

[Horton]

who is the real @FWinter?

[MISkier]

Isn't it Freddie instead of Freddy? Just a simple variation in spelling is all I can see, unless I am missing something.

[Horton]

@MISkier one is a jumper and one is a slalom skier