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WATERSKI MagazineBy 1970 water skiing was becoming as much an integral part of outdoor recreation as fly fishing and canoeing. If someone in the neighborhood had a boat, chances were good they had a rope, combos and, for the savvy skier, a slalom.
Still, huge strides would be taken from one end of the decade to the other. When it started, you were likely to see double handles and outboards on your lake. By the end, if you were a “real skier” you had line-offs in your rope and fiberglass under your feet.
These were the salad days of three-event skiing. For the sport's first 50 years “goofing around” behind the boat – intentional or not – was acceptable. But skiing in the 1970s became more serious. Slalom skiers went off to find their glassy coves, trickers were preoccupied with developing finesse, and jumpers hovered wherever a ramp had been anchored. Trial-and-error marathons were left to show skiers and wanna-be barefooters. Skiers found separate niches, leaving the do-everything group sessions as a part of water skiing's past and, as we would eventually see, its future.
