Shannon%20Best%20Biography

papa · 2007-10-24T16:29:34.000Z

Shannon Best Full Circle After a full year spent traveling and promoting his company around the world, Shannon Best recently returned to his roots and hometown of the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, where he had the chance to spend time with his family, further promote Best on his home turf, and reflect on what has been a long and illustrious career as a professional wakeboarder and kiteboarder. Over seventeen years ago, Shannon left his home as a teenager with aspirations to become a professional wakeboarder. In that time, Shannon has been through the ups and downs of the board industry, winning wakeboard events both behind the boat and the cable, competing in various kiteboarding events, and was involved in the early stages of the sports of wakeboarding and kiteboarding. Shannon is now a partner in one of the largest kiteboarding companies in the world, selling products to all corners of the globe, employing over 20 staff, and helping promote one of the fastest growing sports in the world. But how did he get here? Beginnings Shannon started off as a skateboarder on the Gold Coast in his late teens riding anything from street to vert with his brother and friends. After seeing them wakeboarding for the first time on the Broadwater in â€™88, Shannon was intrigued by the endless possibilities of the sport. A skateboarding injury to his ankle at the beginning of the summer in 1990/1991 forced Shannon off the skateboard and luckily into the cable park, as the footstraps provided more ankle support than the skateboard. At 10 a.m. on the 1st of January, 1991, Shannon rode his first lap of the Cable Ski World ski park in Runaway Bay on the Gold Coast. You could say the rest is history, but only seventeen years of hard work, training, and the desire to be the best would prove that to be true. In his first three days at the cable park, Shannon spent twenty three hours on the water. Four months later, he moved further north to the Sunshine Coast to work on a friendâ€™s orchid farm in the hinterland in the Obi Obi valley. It was here that Shannon would sneak away from the farm, work and train at the Bli Bli cable park. Brandon Wolf, one of Shannonâ€™s original wakeboard crew from Bli Bli commented on Shannonâ€™s professionalism and desire, right from the word go. â€œShannon had trained a hundred laps around the park before work every morning. He didnâ€™t drink, didnâ€™t go crazy and party too hard. By the time we woke he had mastered another trick.â€ These early days saw Shannon and the crew from Bli Bli ride the first production wakeboards called the â€œMcSki,â€ which was a directional-style board with footstraps designed by Bruce McKee, who first saw photos of the sport in â€œTracksâ€ surfing magazine in Australia in the late 1970â€™s. The riders in the shots were surf legends Allan Byrne (Byrning Spears Surfboards) and Kevin Jarrett, both from New Zealand, riding Hot Stuff Skurf Boards. Bruceâ€™s Mcskiâ€™s were first introduced to the States in 1983 called the â€œSurf Ski,â€ while Tony Finn released the â€œskurferâ€ brand the following year. Bruce states, â€œI met Tony Finn when I went to Chicago's IMTEC boat show when I launched the worldâ€™s first production 'wakeboard' with Medalist, or Wellington Puritane, the parent company. They (Medalist) called it 'Surf-ski' and Tony Finn was looking to be the (our) rep for California. He ended up getting connected to Darby and Co. the next year and set up Skurfer.â€ Shortly afterwards, Shannon moved up to the first compression-molded wakeboard made by Hyperlite. Upon winning his first cable competition in Bli Bli in1992, Shannon was strongly advised to go to the States and go pro by his close friend Clayton Dunn from the trick ski days. One month later, Shannon was on a plane headed for the Quiet Waters Cable Ski Park in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Wakeboarding On the 23rd of May â€™93, Shannon arrived at the Quiet Waters Cable Ski Park with determination and zeal to make it in the wakeboard world. Shannon spent two years at Quiet Waters running the cable operations and training for the tour. The first wakeboard tour was run in conjunction with the water ski tour in 1992. â€œIn the beginning,â€ Shannon remembers, â€œski jumping, freestyle, slalom skis and even knee boarding were all bigger than wakeboarding.â€ The first year Shannon rode the tour was in 1994, when everyone was riding directional boards. In September â€™94, the first twin tip was released in Islamorada by WakeTech, which changed the sport forever. â€œIn the early days there were no towers on the boats, no fat sacks, no balsa cores. I was the only foreigner on the tour for the first two years. All the boards weighed fifteen pounds with bindings on them.â€ Shannon was the only cable rider on the tour in the early years and spent four months training behind his good friend Jimmy Sposatoâ€™s boat to be able to ride at a competitive level for his first season on the tour. â€œIn those days you had to qu

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