February 25, 2008

Exclusive Footage of a Young Scott Byerly Riding at a Clinic in Massachusetts

Wake size complainers and elitists (myself included), take note of this video pulled from the archives in the basement of The Wakeboard Report tower. I am behind the lens on this, filming in that everlasting format: VHS-C. My good friend Mark was beside me, and both of us were getting close on backside backrolls when this clinic was conducted. The two other gentlemen in the Malibu outboard barefoot boat had never seen so much as a wake-to-wake jump let alone a switchstance mobius.

Note everyone's reactions as Mr. Byerly warms up. The word 'bewilderment' comes to mind. I say about 10 words the entire time, mostly asking people in the boat to move around so the man could have a balanced boat. The rest of the commentary was from some of the other gents on board. I hate the sound of my voice when recorded so I'm quiet for the most part throughout this (you're welcome). You may hear me make a certain colorful comment when Scott lands the first mobius I had ever witnessed with my own eyes. My apologies, Mom. I don't talk like that very often.

The video you're about to see includes some harsh language mostly "holy sh**s" and holy craps, so please check your delicate sensibilities at the door. Please note that Scott is about 21-22 in this video and almost completely devoid of tattoos. For you wakeboarding historians, this was filmed about 2 months after Byerly cut his hair, and about a year and a half before he won the Pro Tour. And about 30 min after this video was filmed, I shared lunch with Scott and watched the man eat about 4 hot dogs faster than I thought was humanly possible. An impressive man both on and off the water indeed.

I have been wanting to get this to you all for quite some time, so please enjoy. I edited and mastered this video as a super high quality AVI, then encountered difficulties both with the length, quality and hosting difficulties for this video. YouTube seemed the best option, but this video is 24 minutes long and YouTube restricts uploads to 10 min segments and I didn't want to cut this up. Google video ended up being the best option at this time, despite the stairstepping and artifacting you'll see during some of the faster segments, and the compression almost completely destroys our wonderful "The Wakeboard Report" logo watermark at the lower right of the viewable area.

I am going to continue to work on this to provide a better quality version and when that happens this post will be bumped to the top. Until then please enjoy this early footage of the legendary Scott Byerly.

Posted by erik