If you have any idea who Parks Bonifay is, you know that he’s an absolute maniac on the water. As a professional wakeboarder from Florida, the 42-year-old is certainly one of the crazier extreme athletes out there. He began competing at just three-years-old, won his first X Games gold medal at 14, and became a member of the Wakeboarding Hall of Fame, but his career isn’t over.
If his medals and titles weren’t enough, Bonifay has also pushed the limits of what’s possible on the water, including dangling beneath a helicopter and, most recently, barefoot waterskiing behind an F1 car.
Now, we’ve been getting clips from Bonifay’s F1 experience for a little while now, going as far back as April of 2022. But Red Bull keeps dropping more and more gold related to this video, including (most recently) an interview on how the video came to be, and what it was like filming.
If you think alpine skiing hurts your feet, just imagine your bare feet getting ripped across the surface of the everglades. I can’t imagine that feels very good (if your feet are seriously hurting while skiing, consider taking a deeper dive into the fit of your boots, please!).
That fall though, god damn. Taking a tumble on the water at 70 mph is crazy. I’d be so terrified of the small reeds of grass sticking up, ripping through my feet. Also I can’t barefoot water ski, so there isn’t much reason for me to think about such a think anyways.
If you’re interested, make sure to check out the full behind the scenes video posted by Bonifay (right below this). The Florida man stereotype is alive in their athletes as well, it would seem.
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Image Credit: Red Bull via TikTok