Flights carrying Wakeboard World Cup Riders are now arriving in Cairo, Egypt,  from the USA, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Korea, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, China and of course Egypt. In total, 26 of the World’s top IWSF ranked Wakeboard stars have been invited to compete in this Stop of the Waterski and Wakeboard World Cup series. This will be the 23rd such Stop in this global series and following the success of the July Waterski Stop in Dubna, Russia, it will continue on to Singapore, Malaysia and Qatar.

The World Cup Riders will transfer from Cairo, via an excursion to the Pyramids, to the Hacienda Bay Palm Hills Developments in the Alexandria area. This spectacular Mediterranean beach side location will host the first ever World Cup Stop in Egypt. Today’s temperature at Hacienda Bay is a warm 30C / 90Fh and will rise to 32C / 94Fh for the World Cup Finals on Saturday next. At the moment, Cairo is reporting low winds of 5kph / 3mph and humidity at a very comfortable 46%. Both may be a little higher at the World Cup site this weekend.

The World Cup Wakeboard athletes from the 12 countries involved will be among the first members of the public to actually see and experience the new Palm Hills Development (PHD) at Hacienda Bay.  This impressive coastal residential development provides a perfect backdrop for this inaugural Egypt Stop. Official boat sponsors MasterCraft have already shipped the competition boats to the site and there will be World Cup Practice today and Wednesday for those early arrivals. The Semi-Finals will be on Thursday and the Finals on Friday, August 15th.

ALSO ANNOUNCED TODAY BY THE INTERNATIONAL WATER SKI FEDERATION WAS THE LAUNCH OF THE NEW WATERSKI & WAKEBOARD WORLD CUP WEB SITE. All the latest World Cup updates, photos and results will be available here throughout the year. Make sure you now bookmark this URL. Look closely – the name says it all !

http://www.waterskiandwakeboardworldcup.com

The fact that so many of the current World Cup Riders are competing in Egypt makes the possible winners of this Stop almost impossible to predict. None will have local site knowledge at this new Hacienday Bay location. This will level the Palm tree sun drenched playing field for all. However, as usual, there are the gifted male and female Riders who are always difficult to discount and have the skill to reach the top of this World Cup pyramid !  Keep an eye out in particular for the Men – Andrew Adkison (USA), Phillip Soven (USA), Jeff Weatherall (NZL) and Daniel Watkins (AUS). On the Women’s side, watch out for Raimi Merritt and Dallas Friday (USA), Andrea Fountain (NZL) and Chen LiLi (CHN). IWSF World Champion Dallas Friday and international star Phillip Soven both took the previous World Cup Stop titles in November last in Doha in Qatar.  Both are again in top form at the moment. Raimi Merrit, one of the youngest rising stars, has been on the Podium more often than most recently. She took second place at the Qatar World Cup Stop. Andrew Adkison is certainly on a roll at the moment having taken the IWSF World Wakeboard Champion title last November where he was just piped by Phillip Soven in the last World Cup Stop for that title. Both Andrea Fountain and Jeff Weatherall are past IWSF World Champions and both Daniel Watkins and Chen LiLi have also taken Wakeboard World Cup titles as part of their enormous haul of previous victories. With the weatherman predicting hot temperatures, the action out on the warm Mediterranean water will be even hotter !

As ever, this World Cup Stop will feature both as a short NEWS EDIT and as a TV SHOW for distribution to over 500 million viewers. Watch out for World Cup broadcast details, where available, video clips, photos and news updates on : http://www.waterskiandwakeboardworldcup.com