A spectacle of wakeboarding's biggest riders going as big as possible went down from 11 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 6 at an undisclosed location in Orlando, Florida.
With Parks Bonifay's mission to serve up meaty double ups to 12 riders for 20 minutes each, that is exactly what went down. Parks said, "I was impressed with how committed everyone was. The format gave riders the chance to try a bunch of double ups and really go for it. Usually you don't ride like this, because it's not worth getting hurt, and when you do a double up in a normal contest, you usually go conservative. But today, we had Danny Harf getting close on a bunch of 1080's, I was throwing a bunch of double half-cab mobe's and Darin Shaprio was getting close on triple fronts."
Each rider pushed their own personal limits and busted moves that impressed the entire crowd of veteran media and fellow pro riders. With awards for the Best Trick and Biggest Air yet to be announced, we will find out the winners tonight at Parks' VIP party and awards ceremony in downtown Orlando. A few of the standouts for biggest air would be Chad Sharpe's tail glide, Randall Harris' indy tantrum, Shawn Watson's heelside frontside off-axis nosegrab 360 attempt, Shane Bonifay's heelside frontside off-axis 360 and Darin Shapiro's triple front flip attempt. For Best Trick honors, the standouts were a heelside frontside 900 made clean by both Danny Harf and Josh Sanders, Shane Bonifay's heelside backside 720 and Randall Harris' wrapped heelside fronstside 720.
Look for full coverage of the Double Or Nothing in several media outlets soon, with tight photo sequences and still shots of the biggest riding you have probably ever seen.
Parks Bonifay would like to thank Red Bull, Fox Riding Co., MasterCraft and Circus Media. The event would not have been possible without the support of these companies.
Parks would also like to thank the riders for stepping things up a notch.
Shane Bonifay
Shawn Watson
Chad Sharpe
Danny Harf
Erik Ruck
Randall Harris
Darin Shapiro
Gator Lutgert
Daniel Watkins
Josh Sanders
Brett "Ike" Eisenhauer
Stay tuned for winners of Best Trick and Biggest Air.
View a few pictures from Bill Doster in our Media Center.