It’s been a whirlwind of a summer for two lakecity water skiers.
Lucas Pinette, 8, and brother Conley Pinette, 14, have been travelling around the country and internationally competing in various high-level water skiing tournaments — all of which they marched away from with hefty medal hauls.
Most recently, both were crowned overall gold medalists last week at the Canadian Waterski Championships held at Spray Lake, Ont.
Conley skied to gold medals in jump and trick, and won a bronze medal in slalom for the overall first-place result.
“My trick score (5,640) qualified me for the open division for the event, which was the top six in Canada (of any age),” Conley said.
There, Conley improved on his previous score with a 6,170-point effort, winning him the bronze medal in the open men’s division.
Lucas, meanwhile, won gold medals in the boys’ under-10 slalom and jump, and skied to a silver medal in trick.
“It was pretty fun,” Lucas said. “I personal bested in slalom and in trick.”
For Lucas, who has only been water skiing for the past two years competitively, this year was his first national competition.
Both Conley and Lucas also took overall gold medals and first-place in each of the three events at the Western Canadian Championships at the beginning of the month at Shalom Park in Edmonton and at the B.C. Waterski Championships held at Albert Dyck Park in Abbotsford.
The success, however, comes after many hours of practice on Chimney Lake.
“We’re doing about five days a week, sometimes five sets a day but we normally do three or four,” Conley said.
“I’ll do some and Lucas will do a bunch.”
Coming up during the Labour Day weekend Conley will travel to St. Louis, Missouri for the Can Am Challenge — a tournament pitting two teams from Canada and the U.S. against each other in the under-13 and under-17 divisions.
Conley will then travel to Florida to train with the Canadian team coach in preparation for the Junior World Championships in Peru this January.
“That’ll be super fun,” Conley said. “It will be the biggest tournament I’ve competed in.”