Barefoot Water Skiing - from Cawood, Selby, to the world championships in Florida for a couple of Yorkshire daredevils

If it sounds like a sport that would be good for lacerating verrucas, it somehow doesn’t hurt the soles of your feet - if you do it correctly.

Robbie Crewe, 36, from Wakefield and Olly Moore, 17, from Goole, have become so good at it that this week in Florida they will represent Great Britain in the World Barefoot Water Ski Championships

“That’s always the first question people ask you,” smiles Robbie, a double bronze medallist at the Over-35’s European Championships earlier this year. “Does it hurt?

“Once you learn to relax and you get a good technique and sort of learn to ski on top of your feet, it's a bit like you're standing on dry land. It's more of a feeling of gliding and of freeness. It's something you can't describe unless you've done it.”

Olly, sat beside him in the boathouse after a training session on the water in Florida this week, continues: “It’s weird, but it's never actually hurt my feet, although it can get quite hot friction-wise.

“It's a very fine balance, you're talking almost millimetres, but it's a case of standing on top of your feet without putting the front of your foot in the water.”

Avoid putting your toes in the water, comes the warning from both.

“If you do, it will fold you over flat on your face and that can sting a little bit,” winces Robbie.

“So try and ski relaxed. What you find with beginners is that they tend to want to be quite defensive and tense their foot up and try and point their toes really high in the air and then you start skiing almost in the middle of your foot rather than the whole foot.

“That can make it really uncomfortable and that hurts your feet.

“But it's like anything else, once you get comfortable and used to it, you naturally relax and it starts to feel good then. So it's a case of going with it rather than trying to fight it. That takes experience.”

Robbie has been building experience for nearly two decades. He was a casual water skier on Lake Windermere on family holidays, but when tragedy struck it prompted him to give it a proper go.

“Sadly in 2006 I lost my mum in a car accident and after that I decided I wanted to get back into it,” he begins.

“So I acquired a very small boat which my brother-in-law had left rotting away in his back garden. A little 12-footer with a 50 horsepower engine on the back.

“And I went looking for somewhere to ski and found this place called White Cross Ski Club in Cawood on the River Ouse. I was 19.

“One day I was sat on the bank of the river and I saw this bloke, barefoot water skiing. I said to him, ‘can you show us how to do that’?”

A few years later, an 11-year-old Olly was asking the same question of Robbie.

“It was in the middle of Covid,” says the teenager of his own story. “I was playing Fortnite with my step-brother day in and day out, just being lazy. My mum wanted to get us to do something as a family. She used to water ski when she was younger. So we went to White Cross.

“Robbie showed us around and took us out on the boat. We tried two skis for a little bit but I couldn’t get up on two skis to save my life. We were on the boat, and Robbie just suddenly jumps off the back and starts barefooting.

“I was gobsmacked. I was like, I have to do this.”

Olly’s mum has supported him around the world pursuing his hobby, including a summer in Florida and a trip into Europe this year to win two European junior championship medals.

Robbie runs his own small electrical contracting business.

“It's definitely a hobby,” he says of barefoot water skiing. “It's an amateur sport.

"It's what I earn the money for, the motivation to go to work.”

Olly, at just 17, could make a living out of the sport if he wanted to, but not as a competitor due to the lack of sponsorship or broadcast deals. His future income would lay in coaching, which he is considering doing.

Of more immediate concern is trying to win medals as part of the seven-strong GB squad at this week’s world championships.

Barefoot water skiing is split into three disciplines; slalom, tricks and jumps.

“Slalom is when you have to cross behind the boat on one foot as many times as you can in 15 seconds,” explains Olly. “So you'll go from the passenger side of the boat to the driver's side of the boat on one foot. For that event, you’re going about 45 miles an hour.”

Olly’s favourite discipline is tricks. Robbie competes in all three.

So what of their chances at the world championships?

“It was one of my main goals to become the world champion one day,” says Olly, “but I don't think that would happen, considering most people in my category are leaps and bounds above me. But I'm training as hard as I can.”

“You did really well,” interjects the elder Robbie. “You came out here and skied for the US Nationals as a foreign entry and won a bronze medal. You can never say never.

"We’re just doing this for the sheer love it.”