A rider competes during the event
The 2018 Asian Wake Series continued yesterday, with the Macau Wakeboard & Wakesurf Open, a three-day event that featured a total of 90 athletes, of which 10 are from the MSAR.
Hosted in the city for the first time, the organizer of the Open, the Macau Wake Trace Wakeboard Club, hopes to see an increase in the number of its community members, particularly youngsters.
Head of the club, Ricky Sio expressed to the Times that the sport still remains unpopular in the city.
“We hosted this Open because I want to make this sport popular. We want to have [more riders] and train them to become more professional and do better at the sport,” Sio said. Currently, the community has around 20 members.
Sio admitted that it took the club over a year to get approval from the government to use the waters near the Fisherman’s Wharf – a move that he wished could become easier next year.
“Organizing this Open is not easy at all. I hope that when we try the second time, it [will] be much be easier to [get approvals],” he said
Echoing the same sentiments, fourth runner of the Women Novice Division Coreen Choi remarked that wakeboarding remains a challenging sport in Macau.
“We’re just a small group. It is not an easy sport in Macau,” said the participant, who is also a member of the club.
Coreen Choi (second from left)
Choi hoped the government would help the sport target the younger audience, and have them engaged in water activity sports.
With a total prize money of MOP80,500, the open attracted a few younger participants from Taiwan and mainland China.
“At our age, we’re about to quit wakeboarding, so we want more young people to join the community. A participant here who is about age 7, from Taiwan, is already [at] a high level, so if Macau supports this sport, we can have young participants too,” she added.
“If we could get more support from the government, like allowing us to practice in the waters of Macau, it would be great. The government only approved us in Hac Sa but the waters there are not so [great].” Choi said, hinting that the waters at Nam Van Lake and Fisherman’s Wharf would be better.
According to her, the Hac Sa waters are not conducive to quality wakeboarding. As a result, many members of the club resort to traveling to mainland China or Thailand.
“It would be more convenient for us to practice here but if Macau does not have the place for us, it’s pretty hard.”
The event is part of the Malibu WWA Asian Wake Series, which also includes stops in the Taiwan region and Kumamoto, Japan, in the month of July.
The final leg is scheduled in Gyeonggi-do in South Korea.
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