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Wakeboarding is a surface water sport which was developed through a combination of water skiing and snowboarding techniques. Wakeboarding arose in the late 1980s and became quickly popular, and is considered nowadays an individual competitive sports discipline. Wakeboarding involves riding a wakeboard over the surface of a body of water towed behind a motor boat. Boards are similar to snowboards, but wakeboards are larger and constructed of thick-walled stainless steel or aluminium. The waves produced by the boat allow the rider to perform a big variety of manoeuvres and acrobatic jumps.

In Italy, wakeboarding is practised in the sea as well as in the main and minor lakes. Competitions began popping up at first in the United States, and then spread in a few years all over the world. This sport discipline was also broadcast with increasing interest by some TV channels, and became part of the popular ‚X Games’ organized by the American TV channel ESPN. This fairly new successful sport is winning a lot of "riders" and thanks to its popularity, other similar activities are also increasing in interest, like for instance the disciplines “classic” or “bare foot”. The most common difference between a regular board and a wakeboard is its length, with two fins on both board ends, giving the rider more steadiness and control, both when keeping the regular position (with the weak foot forward) and the goofy position (with the right foot forward). ’Running’ a wakeboard involves two combinations of each five manoeuvres, both of them to be completed in a 20 meter space, delimited by two buoys, at a boat speed between 30Km/h and 34km/h, as well as a ‘Double-up’ at the end of the second performance.

A ‘Double-up’ is a figure performed by the rider on a much higher wave than usual, created by the boat pilot thanks to a special manoeuvre. This figure can be done either to the left or right, according to the rider's choice. The boats are also loaded with a ballast system as defined by the judge before the competition starts, and which cannot be changed during the contest itself. The criteria for the points achieved in wakeboarding is completely different from the ones in acrobatic figures, as it considers not only how difficult a trick is, but also how elegant riders are in their performances and to which height they jump. The final score goes between 0 and 100 points.