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Last year saw over 4,000 spectators visit the site along with a live webcast and SGTV recording the event for SKY Sports, if you missed the finals or were unable to attend the live recording you can watch it on Webcast-TV.
The day started out with the Waterski Jumping Qualifying rounds behind one of the fastest tow boats in the World, the Mastercraft Nightmare. We were pleased to see on the water 4 women this year including our regular entrant Jaki Hunter, 2009 EAME Jump Champion Jutta Lammi from Finland, Poland's Joanna Waz and June Fladborg from Denmark all making their first appearance. Freddy Krueger the events hot favorite, proved his rank and qualified straight to the finals with a huge jump of 64.2m, joined by fellow American Scot Ellis and Britain's newly crowned European Jump Champion Damien Sharman leaving fellow Brit Jason Seels to sweat it out in the LCQ round with the remaining 20 ski jumpers. The tail wind and sleety weather was making it extremely difficult for regular long distances but with 9 jumpers exceeding 60m the standard was still extremely high.
As the crowds steadily increased the LCQ's saw a hotly contested competition for the remaining three places in the Night Jump Final, Jason Seels who had earlier that week set the European Record at 70.7m managed to gain a spot with a jump of 64.7m joining Hazelwood's Thomas Asher and America's Brian Kinney who jumped a second highest recorded jump of the day at 65.4m.
As the skiers readied for the finals the attention shifted to the Wakeboarders, British Team members Johnny and Sam Carne, WakeStock finalists Ben Morgan and Lee Debuse, Open Men's Champion Jack Hammersley and former European and World Champion Ben Hitch all took to the water. After an initial qualifying round, the six were narrowed down to three with Sam Carne, Lee Debuse and Ben Hitch making the Night Final behind a wake beast Mastercraft X Star. Ben took 1st place with a run including an indy glide, a grab scarecrow, indie tantrum, toe side 540 spin and a bat wing all in the dark making it twice as difficult to finish their runs! Sam finished a close second with Lee 3rd after a nasty fall in his first pass!
Sandwiched between the wakeboard qualifying and finals, the event saw for the second year the hugely popular Freestyle MotoX show, louder, bigger and more impressive than in 2008. The show wowed the crowd with a huge superman air, lazy boys and tail whips to mention a few! Seen as one of the Night Jumps recent successes the show is sure to be back in 2010 with a night final!
As one of the key sponsors for 2009, Relentless teamed up with Night jump 09 to see the Animal Relentless Mountain Bike display, this saw two of the world's top Mountain Bike riders Martyn Ashton and Sam Pilgrim perform spectacular feats of bike control over the set course, as the light went down flares lit up the riders as back flips and no handed tricks warmed up the crowd ready for the main event. Spectators were looking for any good vantage point for this show and certainly added great value to the day's entertainment!
The whole day had built up to the Night Jump Finals, especially the Water Ski Jump Final under the floodlights in front of the huge crowd and many more thousands watching via webcast. The countdown from 10 was started by our commentators Hamish Wright and Matt Crowhurst and once it reached elapsed the 400bhp Mastercraft Nightmare Boat tore up the lake to signal the start of the world renound London Night Jump Final!
With the 6 finalists including European Champion Damien Sharman (GRB), European Record Holder Jason Seels (GRB) and World Record Holder Freddy Krueger (USA) alongside Scot Ellis (USA), Brian Kinney (USA) and Tom Asher (GRB) it was set to be the biggest and most exciting event between the Brits and the Stars and Stripes!
First up was Britain's Thomas Asher who recorded a 61.5m jump to warm up the crowd and he was followed by Jason Seels who earlier in the week jumped 70.7m. On this occasion he recorded 62.8m to snatch the lead from Tom. Brian Kinney next who had jumped an impressive 65.4m in LCQ but the night jumping didn't help him as he struggled a 53.1m crushing at the ramp. Just as Jason was getting comfortable on the Night Jump thrown, friend and closest competition Damien Sharmen stepped up to record a 62.9m jump beating his fellow Brit by just 10cm! Now down to the final two competitors Damien was assured of a podium place but with the two Americans and World Record holder to come, which place on that podium was under threat. Freddy Krueger behind his title sponsor nightmare boat was up next and as hot favorite the crowd was buzzing, and on his first of 3 jumps recorded 65,6m enough to take the seat as leader with just one to go but not enough to beat Ryan Dodd's record last year of 68.3m. Last to go, Scot Elis from the states was the only man left to take the thrown from Freddy, with his very first jump it was close he took second place and was within 30cm with a jump of 65.3m. With two jumps remaining, could he take the crown, his second jump was significantly shorter leaving it to his last jump but as he hit the ramp a slight crush it wasn't meant to be... Freddy secured his place on the thrown and was crowned the new London Night Jump Champion, with Scot taking the Silver and Damien the Bronze! With the finals over the site cleaned up and the after party hangovers cured, reflection on the 2009 London Night Jump leads the Liquid Leisure team believes this to be the most successful event yet, despite some of the worst weather to date. With Sky Sports set to air the event in October/November and with the huge coverage on Webcast TV it promises to be a springboard for Night Jumps info the future which will im sure become bigger and encapsulate even more extreme sports! Thankyou for your support, attending or viewing and we all look forward to seeing you at the 2010 London Night Jump!
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