July 10, 2009

Wrapping vs Passing - The Debate Is ...Over?

"If you can pass, you shouldn't wrap". -Internet

I see this kind of statement come up once or twice a year at my favorite wakeboarding community sites and I fall for it every time and wind up embroiled in a farce-fest of defending the art of wrapped wakeboarding tricks.

Aside from message board griping, the only actual anti-wrapping material I can recall comes from my early competitive days when you had to write & pre-submit your attack sheet/pass lists to the judges. During that time, wrapped "helicopters" were worth 25 or 50 points less than the handle-pass "helicopter" for the first or second year - then they were equal. Yes I'm old. And yes I checked.

The thing is - wrapped tricks aren't some easy-as-pie, 1st rung on a ladder sort of thing. I think that's one of the biggest problems - the misconception that any trick that has a wrapped variant is flat-out super easy compared to its handle-pass analog and this just isn't the case. Check out some of Danny Harf's recent boosted wrapped toe backside 180's, Aaron Rathy's wake to wake backside 900 or Chris O'Shea's general repertoire of tricks that involved wrapping, which he, like me, was doing even before they came back in style. Chris O'Shea and I have only this in common - he's actually very good at wakeboarding!

I haven't been to a clinic in a while where someone is learning spins (everyone's all about the inverts nowadays) but I don't think people are taught wrapped tricks as if it were the barefoot boom of wakeboarding spins. My box set of Shaun Murray's Detention 2012 does not cover wrapped spins, but does cover wrapped KGB's. So I'd bet that Shaun and others teach passing more often because it is a more useful stepping stone and from a purely technique/utilitarian standpoint, passing carries over to more advanced stuff like mobes. So passing is clearly a technique that you can't live without, while you can be an excellent rider and not know how to wrap, especially in this day & age. Again that alone gives it some kind of quirky appeal to me.

I wonder if wrapped tricks are more common/acceptable for older riders like the editors of The Wakeboard Report, and for folks with a trick-skiing background. Each editor of this site came from a trick-skiing background so there's probably the reason why we have them dialed. One thing I do believe in strongly is the idea of trying to be well-rounded and not just capable of one method of spinning. That said, there are a lot of spins I can only do in one form vs another, which makes little sense to me.

For example:

I can only do switch toeside backside 3's INTO a wrap (which is technically a handlepass trick or if you use your imagination a weird muscle-memory extension of a blindside 180 - you're just starting at a pre-corked position which eases the rotation around).

I can only do regular stance hs backside 3's wrapped.

I can only do hs frontside 3's via handlepass.

My toeside 5's are passed too, but my switch-to-front 5's are wrapped (they also happen to be my favorite trick of all, spin or invert).

Ultimately I think wrapping is a lost art that has recently seen some sort of renaissance. Not a lot of people do it, yet most professional wakeboarders and many professional wakeskaters ride with t or v handles on a regular basis. Perhaps it's my age, my aforementioned in background in trick skiing or various other factors, but ultimately this is a really silly debate. For some reason whenever it comes up, I bite. Each time the subject comes up it makes less sense to me, when there's guys like Chris O'Shea and Randy Harris cooling it up like nobody's business. I bet O'Shea can do handlepass 5's, but I prefer his wrapped version of the trick over just about anyone else's 5 - including elusive ones like backside to-blind 5's, o/a, ole' and awkward toeside stuff.

Please join me in crossing your fingers that the recent resurgence of wrapped tricks isn't a fad, but a recognition of the fact that you can hold a grab longer, glide the board out farther behind you, and in many cases are as impressive and fun as their handle-pass counterpart.

As a protest, my new handle will be customized to only have a t-handle and a 2 foot-long extension of line that attaches to my belt loop with a caribiner. That's it.

Posted by erik at 07:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack