When it comes to going with flow, Lake Country teen among best
You can call it a mix of snowboarding, wakesurfing and skateboarding.
Or you can just go with the description offered by Jonathan Hintz, Canada’s best young flowboarder.
“It’s a ton of fun,” the 16-year-old Lake Country teen said Monday, describing a sport that barely existed a decade ago and which enthusiasts hope might one day be added to the Summer Olympics.
Hintz, a two-time Canadian flowboarding champion, last week placed third in the world championships, held in Cancun, Mexico.
“It would have been great to win, but my main goal was to make the finals and be on the podium, so I’m pretty happy with the way things turned out,” Hintz said.
Flowboarders ride and do tricks on 2.5-centimetre-thick, 50-km/h waves generated by machines called FlowRiders, made by a company in San Diego.
The company sponsors the world championships, paying for top competitors such as Hintz to attend, as a way of increasing the sport’s appeal.
Hintz considers the FlowRider at the city-owned H2O Adventure + Fitness Centre on Gordon Drive his “home wave,” as that’s where he first tried flowboarding.
“From the first time I tried it, I was hooked,” he said. “I didn’t know there was this whole sport around it, but I’ve been lucky enough since then to do a lot of travel for different competitions.”
The Hintzes attend between six and 10 competitive events a year, including last year’s world championships in Singapore, with Jonathan so far earning a total of 21 medals. Competitors are judged on three 40-second turns on a Flowrider.
Despite his obvious skill at the sport, Hintz has what amounts to some encouraging words for novice flowboarders when asked if he ever falls down: “All the time.”
Jonathan Hintz places 3rd at world flowboarding championships