“Let’s face it, you’re never going to get up to 70mph on a trick board,” asserted the old timer down at the aquadrome today when I asked him about how one might go about getting a few water ski-ing lessons, and a bit of a taste of speed out on the water. My dad had tried water ski-ing a few times and somewhere in the piles of photograph of him scattered across the world, there are images of him waving to some anonymous photographer on a boat, on dry land, or even perhaps in the middle of the ocean such was the graininess of the photograph.
But he’s always waving and smiling, one hand on the rope, one hand in the air, teeth gleaming, hair immaculately in place, despite travelling at some speed on one board. I’m not sure whether it was a trick board or not, but he seemed to be having the time of his life. So I’d vowed for some years to get a taste of the high life, or low life, or wet life, or whatever life it was he was experiencing which gave him that joie de vivre and the ability to stand on one board whilst traversing the oceans’ waves at speed.
So to be told I was never going to be able to get up to 70mph on a trick board by someone who I’d never met before, had probably never met my dad before either turned into a call to action which the old timer may well regret one day. I’ll be taking water skiing lessons when the weather gets warmer, my arms get stronger and before the summer is out: and before he knows it, I’ll be back in front of him with the relevant accreditation to demonstrate my target speed on the relevant trick board. This certification will be accompanied by some blog postings which are likely to turn into another book within the ‘Confessions of an Ageing (insert your favourite sports here) Player by the end of the year. He may well regret throwing down that watery gauntlet today.
The Truth, the Whole Truth and Anything but the Truth
One thing for sure though is that the book will have very little to do with water ski-ing.
Hardly a day goes by without someone telling us off about our bodies: they’re too big, too small, in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they just don’t behave in the way we want them to.
How we interact with contemporary sport is a productive way site to explore our relationship with our bodies and we how we they respond to the demands we make of them. We follow performers and athletes, clubs and countries; the ups and downs of the elite; and we are encouraged – daily – to get off our sofas, to join in and be part of some team or another. We identify – and sometimes over- identify – with our sporting heroes. We are appalled at their behaviours when they fall from grace, but can’t help getting drawn into their stories, whatever age we are, and whatever age they are.
The Confessions series of books explores these matters in, hopefully, an entertaining and thought-provoking manner. Whilst a particular sport might be more prominent in the Confessions series, the books themselves are not really about that sport at all. Tennis Player explored dreams and delusions; Footballer, loneliness; Basketball Player was my take on the Covid-19 pandemic and Figure Skater follows this tradition by exploring the expectations around of growing up and adulthood.
I’m not sure what Water Skier will be about yet, but one thing you can pretty certain of is that it won’t be about how to water ski at 70mph on a trick board against the odds at a local aquadrome.
Water skiing. Bah, humbug. I tried it once when I was 13 while on holiday in Cavtat, a small town on the Adriatic coast. My father, in his youth, had been an avid downhill skier until he injured a knee that gave him weekly painful reminders for the rest of his days. With that dubious proviso, he strongly encouraged my chronically asportic self to give the aquatic version a try. My pessimistic premonitions of failure failed to anticipate the sheer humiliation that ensured. Over the course of ten minutes, witnessed by an entire beach of sun worshippers, I had my scrawny arm sockets repeatedly separated due to the power boat accelerating at five times the force of gravity, followed 25 milliseconds later by my face-planting into the water. The boat driver concluded the lesson by muttering “Baja moi” (God help me), which I took as confirmation of a resounding capital F grade for my lack of achievement. On the bright side, I was never coerced into water skiing again, having demonstrated world-class incompetence beyond all doubt or hope of redemption. However, and much to my surprise, I did become a very capable marathon kayak racer years later, and my success as a lean, mean, paddling machine refloated my aqueous credentials. But those are entirely different tales.
Thanks Rick! I think my arms are going to the first limbs to drop off early on in my training schedule!