Ft. Worth, TX - The Vans Wakeboarding Pro, the first event of the 2003 Vans Triple Crown of Wakeboarding season, will be held in Fort Worth, Texas at Marine Creek April 25-27. The world's top professional wakeboarders including Parks Bonifay, Darin Shapiro and Shawn Watson, Tara Hamilton and Dallas Friday will again descend on Marine Creek to lay claim to the 2003 Vans Wakeboarding Pro championship. For those who can't make it out in person, the event will be televised nationally on Fox Sports Net June 12 at 4 p.m. regionally.
In 2002, Fort Worth's Marine Creek was the site of the Built Ford Tough WWA Wakeboard National Championship in which Shawn Watson and Dallas Friday took home the top spots in the Pro Men and Pro Women's divisions.
Top competitors are attracted to the Vans Triple Crown because of the high level of competition at each event. The three-event series is the richest in wakeboarding with over $150,000 in prize money on the line in addition to season-ending awards of a new Ford Ranger and two new SeaDoo watercrafts as bonus incentives to the athletes. The Vans Wakeboarding Pro in Ft. Worth
will carry with it a $50,000 prize purse to wakeboarding's Pro Men and Pro Women's divisions.
The sport of wakeboarding has skyrocketed in popularity over the past ten years making it the fastest growing watersport in the world. Pro Wakeboarding is much like snowboarding with a similar style of board and bindings. Athletes (called riders) perform Big Air tricks behind the MasterCraft X Star, a special boat with weight in the back to create a gigantic wake for riders to do flips, twists, turns and inverts. There will also be a "jib park", or floating skate park out on the water so that competitors can add to their performance by sliding and grinding on rails and performing flips off various ramps.
The Vans Triple Crown of Wakeboarding, the largest wakeboarding series in the sport, consists of three championship-caliber events:
- Vans Wakeboard Pro April 24-27 FSN - June 12 / 4 PM Local (Fort Worth, TX)
- Built Ford Tough WWA Wakeboard Nationals August 21-24 NBC - Sept. 27 / 5:00 PM EDT (Indianapolis, IN)
- Mountain Dew WWA Wakeboard Worlds October 3-5 FSN - Nov. 20 / 4 PM Local (Orlando, FL)
The Vans Triple Crown of Wakeboarding and the Vans Wakeboard Pro presented by Ford Trucks and Mountain Dew are made possible through the support of the Xbox(tm) video game system from Microsoft, Right Guard Xtreme, Fox Sports Net and NBC Sports. The Vans Triple Crown(tm) Series features the world's top athletes participating in premier venues throughout North America for the top prize purse in each of six Core Sports(tm) disciplines: Skateboarding, Wakeboarding, BMX, Freestyle Motocross, Surfing and Snowboarding.
