There is evidence to indicate that water sports were around as far back as 7,000 years ago. Cave paintings from the Stone Age show cavemen swimming. While it’s debatable whether swimming was considered a water sport at the time, swimming is also referenced in early literature including the Iliad, the Odyssey and even the Bible. Swimming was officially added to the Olympic Games in 1896 and has been included ever since.

While the act of surfing was first recorded in the late 1700s by Europeans who stumbled upon the Island of Tahiti, it was around long before that. The ruling class had access to the best beaches and boards and commoners were forced to surf less desirable areas with heavier boards. It wasn’t until surfing came to California that it really took off as a sport. George Freeth was the first recorded surfer in California when he rode a Huntington Beach wave as a publicity stunt.

With the invention of motorboats came an entirely different genre of water sports. According to the American Water Ski Association, the first person to water ski was Ralph Samuelson, who used two boards and a clothesline to ski across Lake Pepin in 1922. Samuelson is widely recognized as the first person to jump a ski ramp, the first to slalom ski and the first to perform at a ski show. Water skiing took off in popularity when Samuelson took his show on the road and showcased his strange new sport across the United States.

Wakeboarding arrived much later and didn’t arrive on the scene until the late 80′s and was originally called “skurfing”, a combination of the words “surfing” and “skiing”. It was started in New Zealand by surfboard maker Allan Byrne, who created a surfboard for people to be pulled around on behind a boat. The actual term “wakeboarding” is credited to Paul Fraser of Vancouver, Canada, who invented wakeboarding as we know it today. Wakeboarding continued to gain popularity throughout the 90′s and is currently one of the top water sports in the United States.