After a 2 year break, London Night Jump returned once more to the shores of Liquid Leisure in Datchet. And after a year where the south of the country experienced extreme floods and Liquid Leisure lost temporary control to the lake; Stuart and his team hit back with a vengeance; why have one competition when you can have three!

Not content with just one iconic ski jump event, the crew focused on the wakeboarding. Installing a range of new obstacles including the Pool Gap in the cable park and a Quarter Pipe at the far end of the lake, they threw down the gauntlet to the world’s best wakeboarders; come and have a play if you think you’re hard enough! And so Plastic Playground and King of Vert, Liquid’s newest and toughest comps were born!

The weekend kicked off on Saturday with ‘The Road to Red Bull Harbour Reach’; a competition run by Red Bull for junior riders, in their search for future champions. Riders got the chance to put their moves in front of the Red Bull team and to ride alongside Red Bull team riders; Dominik Hernler, Brenton Priestley & JD Webb

On Sunday it was the over to the pros as heats got underway for the first of the day’s comps, Plastic Playground. With 16 obstacles in the cable park, the Plastic Playground course was solid. Angles were tight and there was no room for errors; mess up on one obstacle, and you’re immediately heading into another; Plastic Playground was taking no prisoners!

A $5,000 pay cheque for the winner helped to focus the riders, but with the ‘Who’s Who’ of wakeboarding lined up on the dock, it was hard to call.

Whilst good runs were put in by all the riders, in the end it came down to consistent, determined and technical riding which saw James Windsor, Yonel Cohen, Antoinne Allaux, Graeme Burress, Dominik Guehrs, Nico Von Lerchenfeld, Freddie Carter, Chandler Powell, Daniel Grant, Ryan Peacock, Oli Derome and Brenton Priestley making it through to the semi-finals.

The semis were hard fought and with few mistakes, there was little between the riders. In Heat 1 Graeme Burress and Antoinne Allaux took out Brenton Priestley and Oli Derome to secure themselves a place in the finals. Heat 2 saw Daniel Grant crashing out of the contest and Ryan Peacock giving it all he had, but not quite matching the skill of Yonel Cohen and James Windsor who also bagged themselves final places and in Heat 3 Freddie Carter and Nico Von Lerchenfeld progressed ahead of Dominik Guehrs and Chandler Powell.

It was all to play for in the finals and as the hard-core Plastic Playground course sorted the men from the boys; the boys came out on top! Taking the win was 15 year old Yonel Cohen, closely followed by

Nico Von Lerchenfeld , 21, with James Windsor, 18 in third place.

The Quarter Pipe drew large crowds as riders hit the ramp for the first ever ‘King of Vert’ comp. Whilst the pros made it look easy with some seriously sick moves, Karl Herman’s huge drop on the pipe bruising his ribs, left spectators in no doubt just how painful a hit can be. Brenton Priestley, Nico Von Lerchenfeld, Daniel Grant and Oli Derome made it through to the finals with Nico taking the top spot.

With the wakeboarding over, it was time for the notorious Nautique London Night Jump. Even when you’ve seen this before, it’s hard to believe what happens. Talk about crazy, hitting the ramp at 70kph then jumping 66 metres in the air, all in the dark is off the scale!

Freddy Krueger once again pulled out all the stops to earn himself yet another Night Jump title.

Plastic Playground Results

1st Yonel Cohen -  15 JOBE

2nd Nico Von Lerchenfeld - 21

3rd James Windsor - 18

4th Graeme Burress

5th Freddie Carter

6th Antoinne Allaux

King of Vert Results

1st Nico Von Lerchenfeld

2nd Oli Derome

3rd Daniel Grant

Nautique London Night Jump Results

1st Freddy Krueger

2nd Ryan Dodd

3rd Rodrigo Miranda