IJSBA Tour. Russian Open

On August 7th 2005 the first Russian lap of the World Cup “IJSBA TOUR. RUSSIAN OPEN. Tver 2005” on Jet Ski  took place in Tver (Russia). It was described as “the unexampled event in the world jetskiing history” by the foreign observers and experts because of the high realization level of such a large-scaled project.

The competition, organized by the sportclub New League, gathered record audience for such kind of sports – on the both Volga river banks there were 60 000 spectators watching the performance of the world best pilots.

The Ppresident of the Olympic Committee of Russian Federation Leonid Tyagachov, the governor of Tver region Dmitry Zelenin, the mayor of Tver Oleg Lebedev attended the opening ceremony. The Russian flag was raised by our fellow countryman, fivefold Russian champion Sergey Jirov. 23 leading sportsmen from 9 countries took part in close course and freestyle competition.

In close course all the prize places were taken by the French sportsmen. Sergey Jirov, as were expected, showed the best results among the Russian sportsmen, that was noticed by the president of the IJSBA European branch Ives Van Heers. The victory of 13 year-old David Lee Stone who overreached the eminent German sportsman Mark Zickerling in freestyle became an unexpected surprise.
Night freestyle show was the spectacular culmination of the competition. Scores of thousands of people became witnesses of the masterly performed jetski tricks in the light of searchlights and pyrotechnic effects.

The sportclub New League is the one and the  only Russian representative in IJSBA. Competitions, organized by IJSBA, are considered to be the most spectacular and technically perfect.

Since 2005 Russian lap of Jet skiing World Cup has been included in the IJSBA official calendar, while audience interest, official persons support and mass media exalted reviews of the Tver tournament give confidence in the brilliant perspectives of this sport in Russia.