Water Skiing

How many of you have already tried out the sport water skiing? A lot of people got excited about it since its beginnings in 1922 and its popularity kept increasing rapidly. But who had the strange idea to put two boards under their feet and let somebody pull you around in the water?

The physicist Dimitris Onassis was doing some experiments in the beach of his home village in Crete. For some really complicated reason that takes to much time to explain he was doing research with wooden boards in the water. The theory that he wanted to prove did not work out so after some time Dimitris got frustrated and  started to play around with the boards. Eventually his fourteen years old daughter came and together they had the idea to step on the board and see if it could carry one of them.

Of course they sank immediately into the water. Before they did not take things serious and just wanted to play a little bit in the water together but then ambition spurred them on and they thought about a way to be able to stand in the water without sinking. After trying out some more or less smart ideas, Dimitris' daughter told her father to take a rope and pull her around the water. with a clothesline. Dimitris was too slow of course for the experiment to work properly, but they got an idea of how this could actually work if one would only be able to reach a higher speed.

Dimitris decided to borrow a small boat from their neighbor and finally they were successful. The girl managed to stand on the water ski for more than three minutes and had so much fun doing this that it became a popular free time activity among her friends. The word spread quickly and soon the new invented sport water skiing got popular all over the country and even  across its borders.

So what do you think of this story? Can it be true? Is water skiing a Greek invention? Check out the solution at the end of the page.