PILI, Camarines Sur — The provincial government of Camarines Sur is to host the wakeboarding world championship in 2008 after Gov. LRay Villafuerte successfully clinched the bid on Monday in Austria.

Anna Marie Saenz of the Camsur Watersports Complex (CWC) said that the governor won the bid from other countries after presenting the world-class facility to the World Cable Wakeboard Commission (WCWC), the international body that decides on the bidding.

The cable wakeboarding championship is held every two years and this year the venue was in Austria where competitors from Germany, Australia, USA, France, England and Japan participated.

The cable wakeboarding categories are ruled by age with those born in 1991 and after in the boys and girls categories; 1987 to 1990 in the junior men and women categories; 1975 and before in the men and women master categories; and no age limit for the open categories for men and women.

Saenz said that the provincial government has enough time to prepare for the world event and by 2008, she said, all the facilities of the CWC would have been finished.

She said they expect that the world event would put Camarines Sur at the center stage which would make the province a major tourist destination.

The CWC is the second cable park in the Philippines and the seventh in Asia and all over the world there are only 150 facilities. It is much bigger than the cable park in Calatagan, Batangas.

“The finest cable wakeboard facility in the world recently made its grand opening debut in The Philippines! With six towers, fourteen obstacles, a gorgeous well-engineered lake and first-class facilities everywhere, without a doubt the new Camsur Watersports Complex is an absolute must see,” according to the www.cablewakeboard.com.

Cable wakeboarding can trace its roots back to Germany in the 1950s, when during a holiday in Holland, Mr. Bruno Rixen, an engineer from Munich, Germany, experienced water skiing for the first time. He thought it was great, but did not like the long wait at the overcrowded ski school.

Because of the restricted water space in Germany, Mr. Rixen quickly saw the need for a system that would put large numbers of people through areas where there wasn’t room for many boats. Being an inventor by nature and profession, he then set out to invent the ideal skiing machine, one that would adapt the snow skiing tow principle for use on water. The idea was to develop a system similar to that of a ski lift, where skiers were pulled over the water by means of an overhead cable and pulley system, eliminating the need for a boat.

A few years later, in 1962, the prototype of the first cableski system, first made its rounds on a lake near Badesholm, Germany. Soon after, the official magazine of the World Water Ski Union published a very enthusiastic report on this astonishing new way of water skiing, with ten skiers in action at the same time and no boat.( Juan Escandor Jr)