After winning gold at seven major events and being named Water Ski and Wakeboard Canada’s (WSWC) male athlete of the year, it’s a no-brainer for Ryan Dodd to call 2013 his "best year on record.
After winning gold at seven major events and being named Water Ski and Wakeboard Canada’s (WSWC) male athlete of the year, it’s a no-brainer for Ryan Dodd to call 2013 his "best year on record."
The 29-year-old water ski "jump specialist" who hails from Olds but now calls Palm Bay, Fla., home wrapped up the year with a gold medal at the inaugural La Pradera de Potosi Night Fly on Dec. 7 in Bogota, Colombia, after jumping 59.9 metres in the event’s finals.
Just five days earlier, Dodd donned a silver medal for a 68.5-metre effort in the men’s jump at the World Water Ski Championships in Santiago, Chile.
Only half-a-metre separated Dodd from the event’s champion, Freddy Krueger of the United States.
"My dream growing up has been to win the world championships and it was pretty wild to be so close," said Dodd, who had to sit out of the previous world championship event in 2011 due to an injury, in a telephone interview from Orlando. "(I’m) pretty excited about it but I’m definitely wishing I had a few more feet left in me."
Dodd’s wife Breanne also competed at the Santiago event along with nine other Canadians and she placed 12th in the women’s slalom category.
In the midst of his successes at these major events, Dodd learned of being named the WSWC’s male athlete of the year.
Besides the Night Fly event in Colombia, Dodd also won gold at the Australian Open, the MasterCraft Calgary Pro Waterski Shootout, the Canadian Water Ski Championship in Calgary, the L.A. Night Jam, the Orlando Extreme Watersports Fest and a championship event in Florida.
"I was really excited to finish the year on top and I’m ready to get after it in 2014," he said.
Dodd, who has been waterskiing for 20 years, will next compete during a tour of events in Australia in March to kick the 2014 season off.
Before he starts training for those competitions, however, he was taking a 10-day holiday in Olds over Christmas and New Year’s Day, his first break since last January.
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