A self-taught teen from Cranbrook landed himself a spot to compete at the Canadian National Wakeboard Championships in Bala, Ontario on August 16-17.
Seventeen-year-old Colden Thompson has only been a competitive wakeboarder for a year, but has made a podium-finish at every event he’s participated in. Including the national’s competition, where he came in third.
"With Colden being fairly new to competing, this is truly a development opportunity for his future," said his father, Dwayne Thompson.
Colden said he had always been an outdoors person, waterskiing in his younger years. At ten years old, his parents bought him a wakeboard and he hasn’t looked back since.
Wakeboarding is considered an extreme watersport, where riders get dragged on boards behind motorboats before lifting themselves through the air to perform tricks and flips. Points are given based on the difficulty and the amount of tricks a rider does during a sequence.
For the last three years, Colden has trained at Tie Lake, near Jaffray. He represented both his hometown of Cranbrook as well as the Waterski and Wakeboard Association of Alberta (WSWA) at nationals, which were held at Bush’s Watersports Park in Bala, Ontario two weeks ago.
Colden said the nationals trip “[gave him] the chance to learn more about the sport and to ride with – and learn from – the most talented riders in the country.”
“I would be competing against people who were older than me and younger than me,” said Colden of the competition. “It didn’t matter, we weren’t grouped separately on age, because it was just based off of how good you are.”
Colden isn’t stopping any time soon. He made waves this weekend at the WSWA Provincials at Alix Lake near Red Deer, Alberta.
“Every day that I’m not working or doing something else, I’m wakeboarding,” said Colden of his love for the sport.