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Brostock Pro Double Up Finals (Quicktime, 26.9 mb)
Brostock 2007

Liquid Force has always been on the leading edge of shaking things up in the wakeboarding industry, but they really took it to a new level this past weekend at Lake Powell in Arizona and Utah. Liquid Force joined up with Monster Energy to put on a double up contest at their annual Brostock event with the biggest prize purse in the history of wake. The $40,000 dangling carrot was enough to have every pro and quite a few amateurs rallying to get invited to this landmark event.

Kevin Henshaw on his Brostock edition Axis

Brostock went off this past week with three days of action; Liquid Force demo day, the Broshop Challenge and the pro Brostock Double Up contest. Thursday's demo day allowed anybody who made it out to the festivites at Lake Powell to try out Liquid Force product behind one of their 2008 Malibu boats.

Friday had pro shops squaring off by having each shop put forward two riders to compete against each other for the amateur double up title. At the end of the day, Chris Williams, riding for Sports LTD, topped all comers with a huge front flip. Not only did Chris pick up a title and some great prizes, but he also earned a spot in the pro Brostock Double Up contest on Saturday.

The Broshop Challenge competitors

With the Parks Double Or Nothing double up contest on hiatus until January of 2009, the Liquid Force Brostock double up contest is easily the highest profile double up event for 2008. The list of riders invited to this event is a veritable who's who of wakeboarding. The line up and initial head-to-head pairings, which were randomly pulled from a hat by Parks Bonifay, were as follows...

Chris Williams Chris O'Shea Ben Greenwood Phillip Soven Jimmy LaRiche Shane Bonifay Rusty Malinoski Shawn Watson Collin Harrington JD Webb

Aaron Rathy Daniel Watkins Brad Smeele Tom Fooshee Ricky Gonzalez Adam Errington Mikey Ennen Ross Gardner Chad Sharpe Kevin Henshaw

Collin Harrington

This elite list of heavy hitters gathered on Saturday morning to get things started. Keith Lyman was behind the wheel of the Malibu 23 LSV while Parks Bonifay, Bill McCaffray and Greg Nelson took up the seats right next to him and judged each and every double up thrown down. The head-to-head format meant that the field would be reduced by half after the first round. There were definitely some surprises as a few big names went down early to give us the following randomly selected pairings for round two...

• Chris O'Shea
• Phillip Soven

  Brad Smeele

• Jimmy LaRiche
• Rusty Malinoski

• JD Webb
• Tom Fooshee

• Ricky Gonzalez
• Daniel Watkins

• Mikey Ennen
• Kevin Henshaw

As you might expect with a $40,000 prize purse, riders were going all out to make sure they made it into the final five. The upsets kept coming as Malinoski, Soven, Webb, Watkins and Ennen headed to the houseboats to observe the finals with the rest of the crowd. That left Chris O'Shea, Jimmy LaRiche, Tom Fooshee, Ricky Gonzalez and Kevin Henshaw to make up the final five.

Judges Greg Nelson, Parks Bonifay and Bill McCaffray and driver Keith Lyman

As in the earlier rounds, each rider had three opportunities to nail their best double up. Two of their attempts would be thrown out, so each rider would have only one double up on which to hang their hopes. After the first four riders had turned in their double up attempts, Kevin Henshaw's backside 720 and Jimmy LaRiche's two switch heelside 900's appeared to be the crowd favorites.

The tension was thick as Ricky G. left the dock. Many in the crowd knew about the indy Pete Rose Ricky threw to take the CIE Spring Ride double up title less than a month ago and they expected him to bust it out at Lake Powell. Sure enough, Ricky would give the Pete three tries.

Party Island

The first two resulted in falls. Liquid Force's Don Wallace got on the mic and rallied the crowd. Although the final decision was up to the three judges in the boat, it looked like Ricky had only one more chance to nail the indy Pete and give Jimmy and Kevin a run for their money. Ricky approached the wake toeside from the right and the crowd looked on intently. When he came around for the blind landing he was slightly off balance. Although he held onto the handle, he wasn't able to stay in control without quickly spinning a 180 for a bit of a sketchy landing.

Jimmy LaRiche

When the final standings were released on Saturday night at the Skull Candy party with Chuck D and Johnny "Juice" of Public Enemy, Jimmy LaRiche was officially announced the winner and handed a giant check for $20,000. Kevin Henshaw pulled down $10,000 for second place with Ricky G. falling to third and grabbing $3,500. Rounding out the top five were Tom Fooshee in fourth ($2,500) with a 540 and Chris O'Shea finished fifth ($1,500) when he failed to land any of his attempts in the finals. The five riders that made the semis but didn't make the finals all got $500 each for their efforts. Don't miss the video highlights (Quicktime, 26.9 mb) of the finals.

Liquid Force founder Tony Finn was excited about how the event went off. "Liquid Force is all about having fun and going crazy. Brostock was the perfect combination of great wakeboarding, good friends and complete mayhem." Tony continued, "I was super stoked on our solid support from Monster Energy, Malibu Boats, Skull Candy and Alliance. This allowed us to invite all the top riders in the world to compete in a great event for massive amounts of Brostock cash!"

Brostock breakfast

Brostock Lake Powell is the first of two wakeboarding festivals put on by Liquid Force in 2008. The second Brostock will take place at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia on July 19-20. Brostock is sponsored by Liquid Force, Monster, Malibu Boats, Skull Candy, Alliance and Lake Powell Resorts. Look for a full photo gallery and more details on the crazy off-water Brostock action coming soon. For more information about Brostock, go to www.liquidforce.com.

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