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Wakeboarder a national champion, nabs bronze at Worlds

Colden Thompson making waves in national and international wakeboarding competitions.
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Local wakeboarder Colden Thompson has hauled in some impressive results over the month, striking gold at the national championship in Alberta while also capturing a bronze medal during world championships this past weekend.

Thompson punched his ticket to worlds earlier in August after capturing a gold medal in senior men’s at nationals during competition on Lake Chestermere in Alberta.

“Basically, I landed everything I wanted to land and didn’t fall, so I was able to make it to first place and was pretty excited about that,” Thompson said, who also won it all last year in the junior men’s division.

Riders get two runs to put together a sequence of tricks that are scored by judges.

“A few of my tricks are a backflip 360 and then the other one was a front flip 360 — those are like my main tricks, the best ones,” Thompson said, who also pulled off a 720 during his gold-medal winning run.

“…You’ll have eight tricks total — four going up and four coming back. Everyone will do different tricks and everyone’s run is a little different. Basically I’ll have that run and all the tricks figured out. So the week before competition, I’ll ride on my lake as if I was in the competition.”

Winning first place also automatically qualified him for a chance to compete in the pro division, where he finished in sixth place.

“How it works, is they’ll take the top three people from all the other divisions and then they’ll ride against the open pro division,” Thompson said, “so there will pro wakeboarders who are already qualified to ride in that, then out of the amateurs, you can qualify by getting top-three to move to pro.”

Following his results at nationals, he headed out to Toronto to compete at worlds this past weekend, speaking with the Cranbrook Townsman after qualifying for the final run.

“It was good,” Thompson said. “I landed pretty much all my tricks. Basically there was a semifinal and they took four people to go to finals, so I made in fourth place to make it to finals.”

He rides on Tie Lake, just outside Jaffray, where he has honed his wakeboarding chops for years, and started hitting the competitive circuit four years ago.

Thompson wasn’t the only one getting some hardware recently, as local wakesurfers Ryder and Dagen Duczek also grabbed some recent impressive results this summer.

Dagen won silver in the provincial U17 wakeboard and gold in the free ride Alberta Junior surf division. His older brother, Ryder, won bronze in the Alberta U17 novice wakeboard division and gold in the provincial junior surf division.

Additionally, Ryder also won first place in the Junior Boys division at the Canadian Wakesurf Nationals at Lake Chestermere earlier in August.



Trevor Crawley

About the Author: Trevor Crawley

Trevor Crawley has been a reporter with the Cranbrook Townsman and Black Press in various roles since 2011.
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