HK teen tries to spread the gospel

Awesome. That's how 19-year-old Julien Breistroff describes wakeboarding - and it's not surprising considering he has been in love with the sport for more than half his life.

'I found wakeboarding at the age of nine and I fell in love with it at once. I did a couple of different sports when I was small, but ever since discovering this sport, I have only been seriously involved with one,' says Breistroff, who will be one of three athletes representing Hong Kong at the Haiyang Asian Beach Games in Shandong in June.

The former Chinese International School student has represented Hong Kong since he was 14 and was a semi-finalist at the last Asian Beach Games two years ago in Muscat, Oman. He believes the biggest problem wakeboarding has to grapple with is convincing the public - and the International Olympic Committee - that it's a fun but also very competitive sport.

'We are underexposed and that is the biggest problem facing our sport. We also have other issues, like the [high] cost of being towed around by a boat ... But cable wakeboarding will help offset this and it will help increase popular interest for the sport,' said Breistroff, speaking from his university in California.

A traditionalist boat wakeboarder, Breistroff acknowledges the benefits - mainly environmental - of cable wakeboarding and said the sport had to swing that path especially as it chased Olympic status.

'Cable wakeboarding offers a perfect way to grow the sport. Boat wakeboarding will always be my 'thing' but this will be the future of the sport.