Aaron Rathy has been pushing himself harder than ever in 2012, and it seems to be paying off…pics: Cortese

 

How does it feel to have your name and Byerly’s name both printed on the same wakeboard?

It’s an honor.. Byerly has done so much progressive stuff in our sport, so for him to give me my first pro model is pretty motivating. I was always bummed it took this long, but not having my own board made me ride a lot of different shapes, so by the time we started working on the AR-1 I knew exactly what I wanted in a board.

 

 

What are your plans for the off season? 

I haven’t bought any plane tickets yet, but I’m hoping to go to Asia to ride some parks and back to Australia to ride with Harley. Last winter I spent a couple months at his family’s house surfing and wakeboarding everyday. Australians have it made!

 

 

Is there a lucky lady in your life or is wakeboarding the only thing you are passionate about?

No lady at the moment. Wakeboarding is a lot less complicated.. haha.

 

 

Is cable wakeboarding a fad like leopard bikinis or is it going to kill boat riding? Which do you spend more time on? 

As far as contests go, if the king of wake series doesn’t integrate cable contests into our series, which is what I’m pushing for right now, then I can definitely see park events taking over. I would like to think people are always gonna ride boat. Especially right now, with the new wakes being so big, there’s a lot of potential for our sport to progress in a big way over the next few years. I ride both: To me wakeboarding is wakeboarding, just depends what Im feeling. Lots of days I’ll ride both.

 

 

Are you going to ride the tour next year? Why or why not? Doesn’t it cost more than you can win? 

Yah, a lot of times it does… boat contests are just becoming so repetitive, I have a lot of respect for the dudes winning them, but our series needs to be more diverse. Wake Open was the type of format I’ve been looking forward to for a long time, and that should have set a standard for contests to come.

 

 

Did you start a gang recently? All the sudden everyone is wearing random limb sleeves around town. Dwight Howard is even doing it…  

Haha Dwight’s always biting on my style! Umm its actually more of a cult. big things to come…

 

 

Have you had any strange encounters with fans after becoming a regular on the Wake Brothers TV show? 

Nothing too wild. The occasional photo at airports and stuff like that.

 

 

What do you think of the future generation of wakeboarders? Are they coming up strong or doing it wrong?

I’ll have to get back to you on that. I ride with the younger guys quite a bit and they definitely rip! Sometimes I think they’re too concentrated on doing well on tour, which is fine, that’s a way to create a name for yourself in the industry, but being the next generation, I’d like to see them break the mold, and not just turn into a bunch of new contest riders doing mobes and big spins. There’s a ton of talent coming up and a lot of the best dudes just moved in together so that’ll be interesting to see them push each other.

 

 

If you started your career from day 1 all over again, is there anything you would do differently? 

Of course, there’s a lot of things I could’ve changed. I could elaborate, but then I’d have nothing to say on my 60 minutes.

 

 

What’s the next big thing we can expect out of Aaron Rathy? Film projects? Tour titles? Reality show spin off? Give us the lowdown on future plans…

Yah, I’ve been working on a web edit with Spencer Norris for the past couple months, which we’re just putting the finishing touches on and should be out soon. There’s also talk of filming for a couple new feature videos in the next year, so hopefully traveling and filming. Either way just trying to ride fun parks or a big wake.