Home > Learning Center > Cable park taps water sports enthusiasts

Cable park taps water sports enthusiasts

PILI, Camarines Sur—Gearing up for bigger entrepreneurial challenge in addition to several tourist resorts and facilities already in business for 10 years now, the provincial government here has opened a cable park, the second in the country but the first one owned by a local government unit.

A cable park is a facility that allows sports enthusiasts engage in water sports—water skiing and its derivatives—wake boarding, wake skating and knee boarding sans towing motorboat but using a cable technology to tow the riders.

Relatively new, the cable technology for water skiing was introduced in a six-hectare cable park complex here with a 4.5-hectare oval artificial lake around a mounted island.

It has an overhead cable suspended 8-12 meters above the water using specially designed pylons.

The cables run counterclockwise around the lake and is powered by a variable electric motor that generates speed of 20-65 kilometers per hour.

Technology

The cable technology has evolved from and popularized derivative extreme sports of water skiing among several Asian nations.

These extreme sports originally made use of the wake or track left by a speeding towing motorboat to perform water stunts called "tricks."

Its development opened wide access to the extreme sports because it had reduced performance costs and increased the number of enthusiasts performing the acts—from one to several performers at a time—without the costly requirement of a motorboat.

All over the world, there are 150 cable parks, 60 of which are in Germany, seven in Asia and several others are in the United States and Australia. Two are in the Philippines—in Calatagan, Batangas, and the other one in Camarines Sur.

Sports tourism

Optimistic that the cable park would bring in water skiing and wakeboard enthusiasts around the world, Camarines Sur Gov. LRay Villafuerte looks forward to capturing the growing market of sports tourism worldwide, especially from the cold regions.

"We are confident we could draw sports tourists in at least four of the eight cold months, from May to August, with Thailand, our closest rival, having three cable parks at present," Villafuerte said. He said the demand for alternative destination for watersports in Asia during the cold months had increased dramatically because of the growing number of enthusiasts embracing the lifestyle of wakeboarding.

In temperate climates, enthusiasts have only four months of warm weather suited for watersports. The rest of the months of the year are chilly and wintry.

Emergence

The governor, a recipient of World Young Business Achiever Award for Excellence in International Operations in 2002 expanded the entrepreneurial thrusts of the corporate provincial LGU that included investments in digital animation and a five-hectare information technology (IT) Park in the sprawling 118-hectare capitol complex where the cable park is also located.

He is a seasoned businessman who built a technocraft business, the Lara's Gifts & Decors, from a P50,000-capital into a multimillion-peso enterprise in his early 20s.

Wakeboarding emerged with the creation of a specially designed short board sometime in 1985 in the United States. Wakeboarding or riding on the water tracks of a towing motorboat has achieved sports level in 1990 with the holding of the first international competition, which was broadcast worldwide through the ESPN sports channel.

Wakeboarding makes use of a short board with foot bindings on which a rider is towed by a motorboat or cable across the wake, especially up off the crest for aerial maneuvers.

Wake skating is performed similar to wakeboarding but without foot bindings and kneeboarding and requires the rider to sit on a board secured in adjustable strap, follow the same principles of riding the crest to do tricks.

Kinga Horvath, 25, a Hungarian female rider and the champion of the European Cup in 2004 and 2005, described the Camsur Watersports Complex (CWC) as comparable to the most innovative cable parks in Europe.

Horvath said the cable park here has enough room for aerial maneuvers and great obstacle courses to perform exciting tricks.

Ronald Cailao, 47, a wakeboarding instructor for 20 years, described the cable park here as thrice bigger in area and twice bigger in lake size than the Lago de Oro, the first cable park in the country located in Batangas province.

Cailao, who worked in Lago de Oro for eight years, said that in comparison, the CWC has six pylons planted around the lake that provide smooth turns for riders maneuvering the bends while the latter has only three.

The lesser the pylons, the more difficult the course, he said.

He added that another advantage of the cable park here is that it has an island in the middle of the lake that prevents the waves from the other side of the bend reaching the opposite side, which affects performance of riders.

Villafuerte said the CWC blends the ideal combination that makes cable parks more diverse and competitive to attract and hold sports tourists for days to enjoy.

"With the cable park here following the latest trend in technology, location that requires sunny weather and flatlands, use of potable water to fill in the lake,

spaces that diversify enjoyment like artificial beach, pavilion and other services, our facility can compete easily," the governor said.

He added that the rates are even affordable to locals at P150 an hour to a bargain rate of P350 a day.

He said he expected to generate foreign clients through word-of-mouth channel.

http://money.inq7.net/topstories/view_topstories.php?yyyy=2006&mon=06&dd=04&file=3

Cable park taps water sports enthusiasts
Posted: 3:15 AM | Jun. 04, 2006

Juan Escandor Jr., PDI Southern Luzon Bureau
Inquirer

Published on page B3 of the June 4, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

Boating supplies | Boating accessories | Learning Center | Site Map | Links | Contact | Home

Copyright © 2008