Some 2 weeks ago, this years Wake The Line at Stadionbad Colgne, took place. I joined for the second time, after 2008. The setup by UNIT Parktech was insane and all together with the world class riders, the contest as well! We saw some really nice action and due to the reason that it’s the only competition, where spectators as well as the photographers get that close to the action, the shooting was really different than the “normal” cable action.

In the end, Raph Derome from Canada ended up, taking the 1st place in wakeboarding category and Jan Kissmann defended his title from 2009 on the Wakeskate. The Wakeboard podium was completed by our German talent Nico von Lerchenfeld and Shaun Watson, Ben Horan took 2nd and Lukas Suess 3rd in Wakeskate category. But there was still the Best Trick to be announced and this title went also to Jan Kissmann for the wakeskating part and to Daniel “Fetzy” Fetz for the wakeboarders.  Here is the sequence of Daniels’ trick!

Daniel Fetzy with his massive 270 Transfer onto the handrail! RESPECT!

He already started doing this massive 270 transfer on Saturdays training and stomped nearly every try nice and clean! My personal favorite was Daniels answer after his first run on Sunday morning (first trainingrun of all compitors at the contest day!), when I asked him, why he didn’t do a safety run first: “Well Ben, you have just some hits here at this perfect setup and that’s why I want to use every single run as good as I can! ” BIG RESPECT! Fetzy definitely deserved those extra 500 bucks and reached 4th place in the end!

And here is the same action in “moving pictures”. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get the perspective I wanted, because of the friendly camera-guy who was filming for the online stream! But I think this picture also shows the enormous action quite well. My bad I didn’t get the last frame completely and cut of some parts of Fetzy! Maybe otherwise it would have been something for print?! Here is the gif-file, anyway…

Daniel Fetz - 270 Transfer Backlip (click to see bigger image)

In the end, a perfect competition ended with some serious action! Thanks again to all those guys making it happen! I’m already looking forward to 2011 and can’t even imagine what the setup will be like, then. If you like to see some more of my pictures, just check out the gallery at thegapmagazin.com…