After a long wait, the Wavesport promotional DVD dropped through my letter box the other day and since then I have watched it several times! It is the first offering from Wavesport for a while and all I can say it was worth the wait!
As soon as the title menu comes up on your tv you are hit by some truly amazing music that suits the paddling clips down to the bone. The first introduction chapter hits you straight away with Jimi Blakeney going huge and this theme lives through out the dvd. There are clips of Freestyle on many of the worlds best playspots and features, The Buseater Wave in Canada and the infamous Skook, there are some great creeking runs, waterfall drops and river running clips aswell to get away from a pure freestyle dvd.
The freestyle offerings however are something to be admired, from Jimi Blakeney getting about 3-4ft of air out of the water at the start, much to the satisfaction of the other WS paddlers, to Tanya Shuman racking up a ridiculous amount of clean ends. Even though Wavesport show you the trashings and mistakes before the rest of the filming, you cannot help but feel humbled by the top quality paddling ability of some of the WS paddlers, truly inspirational if you paddle freestyle or any other discipline. (If you look at the end of the DVD on the titles after the main movie even Doug Cooper gets a mention as UK Doug!)
Apart from the main movie which features many of the Team Doubleyouess paddlers, there are many extras, old videos from the days of the Wavesport X and XXX, 1997 and 1999, which shows you how advanced freestyle or rodeo was in those days, and the Wavesport Open which shows many paddlers, sponsored and unsponsored just having a laugh! Aswell as the DVD you get the NEW Wavesport catalogue, showing all of their boats, kit and paddlers.
All in all, if you have not got this DVD yet then hang on and wait because you will find it is worth it!
Matt Kenna-kayaingkenna
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