Andy Yates in training at the Cable Wakeboarding park

Our local champion Andy Yates is still training hard for his comeback into competitive freestyle this year in the PKRA world tour. 

After surgery on his shoulder late last year, Andy has been slowly recovering over the summer and is just recently kitesurfing again. Earlier this month we saw a couple of video's of him training at his home town of Caloundra and also a bit further north at Double Island Point, QLD. Although his riding was definitely a notch above what we're used to seeing in Australia - it wasn't exactly world champion material either. 

As you'd expect, it's not easy to get back on the podium at the world freestyle kiteboarding tour of the PKRA - so Andy has spent the rest of summer training hard both on the water, and at the local cable wake boarding park in Bli Bli. After three weeks of no wind on the QLD coast, things are getting busy at the cable park - so Andy went over the road to the brand new (members only) 2.0 Cable system in the next lake. Unlike the usual cable systems which run around 5 pylons on the outside of a lake. This only has two pylons and the rider runs back and forth between them, either stopping at each end or expertly carving around to link up the runs. The same tricks can be performed on either system, and the shorter line length makes it particularly similar to kiteboarding - there's just no wind required. 

It's a bit of a crash video, but there's some good stuff in there too including some kicker and slider footage where Andy dons a pair of bindings to look the part. You know, when in Rome...