Every week I am going to interview a different rider/industry figure with 5 questions. This section will be known as “The Powwow”. This is the first week and Kyle Rattray was nice enough to answer these question for us. Kyle is one of my good friends and he is an awesome rider with a really cool back ground on how he got involved in the sport. Kyle is from Toronto, Canada and being from a place were it is cold 70 percent of the year didn’t stop him from following his dream of moving to Florida and being a pro wakeboarder. Kyle is also not just a rider. He is a boat driver for the PWT, coach at The Boarding School, and a team manager for Gator boards. He has is hand in just about everything that the wakeboard industry has to offer and he is pretty darn good at everything he does. Keep a look out for Kyle cause he is everywhere these day’s.
What’s the coolest thing you have got to experience because of Wakeboarding?
One of the coolest things Ive got to do was walk the track and checkout all the cars before the Daytona 500. Centurion is a sponsor of Nascar so being a rider for them the team gets to go to the race, put on a little demo on the lake in the infield, and we get passes that let us walk where ever we want! i got to talk to Jimmy Johnson right before he got in the car to race!
What was the easiest trick for you to learn and what was the hardest?
i don’t know if I’d say any trick was super easy to learn, but some tricks once you land once it seems like you’ve go it dialed right away. Sometimes its a battle to get that first one though. I worked on a Pete Rose for a long time and once I landed one I started hitting them every try. The hardest tricks for me are spins. I have a hard time getting spins really dialed. I try to spin as much as I can to get them consistent but I somewhat kinda struggle to get them feeling 100% on point all the time.
How do you find time to breath between being a rider, coach, boat driver, team manager, and planning a wedding?
Its tough sometimes, but I love everything I do. I think it would be hard to juggle all the things I take on if I was not enjoying it, but I have fun with every role I’ve taken on. I try to prioritize things and make sure the important things like riding, and family time happen, then when I have free time I usually try to squeeze other things in. I like that I am involved in many aspects of the sport because I feel like I never get burnt out on one because my days constantly change with the things I have to do. And I let my woman do most the wedding planning, i don;t know what I’m doing in that area anyway, haha.
I have seen the boat that you learned to ride on. Tell us what it was like learning how to ride up in the cold north?
It was awesome! I think having such a short season made you really take advantage of each day. If it was cold, windy, whatever we always rode. My family had a 120 horse power boat so I was constantly driving around trying to find pulls behind a “wakeboard boat”. Smokey Joe is what we called our boat and I definitely spent some hours behind that thing. I use to fill up chemical barrels with water and put them on the floor to try to jack up the wake. To this day I’m not sure why my dad let me do that, the boat nearly sank every time I did that.
What can we expect to see form Kyle Rattray in the next 12 months?
My goals for the next year is to finish top 15 on the tour, and try to consistently get photos in the mags. I really like shooting as well as competing. I’m trying to fill some holes in my riding to make my pass a bit more well rounded for next year. I really need to spin better! I also wanna just keep having fun. Wakeboarding for a living is the best job in the world and I’m going to keep doing everything I can each day to make sure I can continue to this!
