Nachruf Mark Kenney

Mark Kenney hatte gerade den absoluten Durchbruch geschafft, als er in der Nacht auf den 18. August 2002 im Schlaf verstarb

Mark Kenney in der Schweiz

Mit Mark Kenney verlor die Wakeboard Welt einen der viel versprechensten Rider unserer Zeit.

Mark Kenney hatte gerade den absoluten Durchbruch geschafft, als er in der Nacht auf den 18. August 2002 im Schlaf verstarb.

Über Mark Kenney
Der Australier war einer der aufstrebensten, nicht amerikanischen Pro Rider. Er war am Weg ganz nach oben und der einzige, dem es bislang gelang, die Vormachtstellung der Amerikaner zu durchbrechen.

Der Sieg bei den Gravity Games 2002, Asian X-Games Champion und der 3. Platz im World Cup Ranking machten ihm zum stärksten Konkurrenten der aktuellen Top Rider.

Die Umstände seines Todes waren lange unbekannt. Eine erste Authopsie ergab keinerlei Anzeichen auf Fremdeinwirkungen, Drogen oder Alkohol. Auch seine letzte Knöchelverletzung und ein paar angeknackste Rippen deuteten nicht auf die Todesursache hin.

Sein Auftritt in Europa - Wakestock Thun
Erst wenige Wochen vor seinem Tod, konnte sich Europa ein Bild von dem jungen Talent machen. Wir waren mehr als beeindruckt und prophezeiten Mark eine glänzende Zukunft.
Sein imposantes Auftreten beim Wakestock Festival in der Schweiz im Juli 2002 war prägsam. Dort ließ er selbst Wakeboard-Superstar Darin Shapiro blaß aussehen und sicherte sich überlegen den Sieg.

Die Thuner Zuschauer war derart ausser sich, dass sie Mark nach seinem Sieg im Superfinal derart pushten, dass er erneut aufs Brett stieg und einen DoubleUp nach dem anderen als Showeinlage zeigte, jeder perfekt gestickt.

Sein Riding Style war geprägt von seiner Sicherheit. Er landete selbst schwierigsten Tricks, auch unter ganz schlechten Wasserverhältnissen.
Seine Qualitäten als Showman bleiben bis heute unangetastet, was ihn zum Liebling des Publikums machte.

Die Wakeboardwelt hat ein ganz großes Talent verloren!

Wir sind Stolz und Dankbar zugleich, Mark kennengelernt zu haben und sein Talent live mit zu erleben.
Unsere ganze Anteilnahme gilt seiner Familie und seinen Freunden, wir wünschen ihnen alles Gute und viel Kraft.

Ruhe in Frieden

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Hier ein Press Release der Kenney Family
mit einem Nachruf seines Freundes und Mitbewohners Jay Lally:

Kenney Family Press Release

The family of Mark Kenney would like to send out their thanks to all, for the support and sympathy they’ve received in their time of need. Marks direct family includes his mother Carol, father Gary and his brother Shane. Marks passing is tragic and his family is devastated. Mark will truly be missed by all.

At this point in time the family and close friends are still trying to work out what will happen over the next week. With Mark being out of Australia and in the U.S. the situation is very difficult and time consuming to handle. Carol and Gary will be travelling to the U.S. and plans are under way to hold a memorial service in Australia upon their return with Mark. At a later date, a tribute to Mark in the US will be organised. As further details come to hand, dates of these services will be forwarded.

The date of Marks death was Sunday the 18th of August 2002. The circumstances of his death are still unknown. An autopsy has been performed and the results have not been conclusive as to the cause of his death. Foul play, injury to his body organs, choking, drugs and alcohol have all been ruled out as the cause of his death by the examining Doctor. A toxicology test has been issued to further examine the reason for passing away in his sleep. This will take from 6 to 8 weeks to receive the results. Mark was carrying a minor ankle injury from the Gravity Games and hairline fracture in his ribs sustained from riding the previous weekend. Mark was a strong man physically and emotionally and was in good health prior to the incident.

The words below have been written by Jay Lally to tell his respect for Mark. Jay is a dear friend who has devoted himself to Mark in ways that cannot be valued. Mark was living with Jay in the US and was the person who discovered Mark’s passing last Sunday. These words come with the support of Mark’s family.

R.I.P Mark Kenney...


"The Friend" Mark Kenney
By Jay Lally

For all the years that I have pumped up my friend, Mark Kenney, it has always been about his phenomenal skills on the water. So much skill that very few will ever realize or witness again. When I was defending him over the years after his DQ at Worlds in ’99 it was always based on the fact that it was a talent on the water that everyone was ignoring. What was lost in all of this was the fact that Mark had the most potential of being the next SUPERSTAR in wakeboarding.

When the Pointless Crew got together to change pro wakeboarding to their liking by building sliders in their backyards and then having them a major feature on the pro tour, Kenney went out and redefined WAKEboarding. He brought back the soul of the sport by concentrating on making his wake tricks so big, smooth and technical that the judges started to ignore the fact that he fell on the sliders and more often than not took the wake tricks to a new level .

It took a while of course, he had a set back in ’99 and he was injured in 2000 but all the time Mark was maturing as a rider and as a man. In Marks early days I had the chance to see this 15 year-old cocky kid spinning 900s like they were nothing, beating Danny Harf at his own Nationals, then a month later turn extremely bitter and disgusted with the whole sport after the 1999 Worlds. I saw him come back the next year with all the talent and desire to go out win on the US pro tour, only to see it fizzle away for lack of money, unfortunate judging and the introduction of obstacles into his "Wake" world.

Along with Mark’s obvious talents on the water was his ability to forge friendships in wakeboarding out of the mainstream of wakeboarding. One of those friendships was with Matt Stockwell. Mark and Matt had not only formed a tight friendship on and off the water they trusted each other enough to develop a manager/rider relationship. Matt was savvy enough with Mark’s recent wins at Asian X and Aussie X to score him enough sponsors to get him to the states for the 2002 season. He would still need some help from friends here in the states and he would have to do well and win money to be able to afford to travel to many tour stops. All this hard work was done knowing that 2003 would be Mark’s coming of age as a professional wakeboarder.

Mark was on a mission when he came over to the US this year. He passed up the first, all slider stop to compete and win at the Australian Nationals. The next weekend he was at the Pensacola stop and schooled the Americans on proper use of the wake. He had the highest scores all the way to finals and was finally edged out by Darin for a second place. The next stop in Charleston, he did it again, posting high score all the way to finals and got DQ’ed for showing off to the crowd. He would have finished 3rd there. He finished 6th in Detroit, 4th in Indy. Then onto Switzerland where he was unstoppable and took 1st place. Two weeks later he won the Malibu open. The next week he took second but deserved the win in Irvine. He was
all primed and confident to win the biggest tourney of the year and he went out and left little doubt he was the new Gravity Games champ.

He went to Philly with full intention of winning the X games but took his switch mobe a bit too big and as Mark would say "I fell off", That’s it. If he didn’t make it big in any tourney that would be his only comment, " I fell off". He was so stoked for Danny to win X games. When everyone was giving Danny the standard congrats on his win, Mark was telling Danny how well deserved the win was, that it was so sick for him to stick the wake to wake seven and 9 off the doubleup, even after a fall. When Dallas was being interviewed by ESPN before the awards ceremony she was totally distraught, she had honestly felt that she deserved first place and it really upset her the judges didn’t see it that way. Well Mark saw what was happening and he got Amy Sanders (Josh’s sister) to get him to help cheer Dallas up. To put a "smile on her dial" as Mark would say. It worked, by the time the interview was over Mark and Amy had Dallas smiling for the cameras.

Basically, what I’m trying to convey to everyone in the wake community is how much Mark Kenney cared for this sport. How he was willing to train up here in N.C. with me and my crew, despite the fact there is no one here on his level to push him or inspire him. He never bitched about having to watch my standard boring wake run time after time and he respected us for our abilities or lack thereof. He was more interested in riding with friends than being around the "Pro" scene that would have probably boosted his career a bit more. Time after time I would suggest that he go spend some time with Darin or the Hansen’s, as they had all issued an open invitation for Mark to ride with them, so that he could get some slider experience and some good advice from THE MENTOR in our sport, Darin Shapiro. Time and time again Mark would start to plan to go to Orlando but always would change his mind in preference of staying "Home".

I can state that with a bit of pride that Mark Kenney would consider Aberdeen, North Carolina his second home. I mean there is nothing here in Aberdeen, we have to drive an hour and a half to go ride. The best I could offer Mark as far as entertainment around here was a trip to the CD store and a dinner at Mt. Fuji’s Japanese steakhouse if he made it to finals in a tourney. He was happy with that and never asked for anything more. Mark loved just riding my dirt bike around the property and he even bought a go cart so we could pull each other on the mountain board behind it. He loved my dogs, he had grown particularly fond of my Weimereiner "Tucker" and had made plans to get his own Weim when he got back home. He loved all our family and helped out tremendously with the baby of the family, our 5 month old yellow lab "Grommet".

But getting back to Mark’s genuine care and interest in OUR sport. With all of Mark’s unfortunate experience’s with the US Pro Tour scene he never developed any bitterness towards anyone. Even after three years have gone by and the announcers on the pro tour are STILL bringing up the incident at World’s in ’99, Mark still just blows it off. He doesn’t harbour any bad feelings for people bringing that up, although he has stated to me, he wish it would just go away. He even brought to my attention just the other day, even if he would have been on time to World’s that day, he wouldn’t have beaten Danny Harf. He told me that even his best run could not have not beat Danny on that day. Danny probably had the all time best wakeboard run that day, scoring in the 90’s. Just think of the implications there. How many videos and how much exposure has Danny Harf gotten after 99 Worlds and Mark is saying that he deserves every bit of it knowing that it could have been himself in the limelight.

Mark was a class act when it came time to giving props to where they’re due. Even though his top goal this year was to better any other Aussie on tour (and he succeeded) he still had the utmost respect for his Aussie competition in Ike, aniel and Josh. I would try to pump him up by telling him that his handle pass back roll to blind looked so much better than Watkins and he would always come back with" yeah, but Daniel’s are the way they’re meant to be done". Same thing when I would comment about the way he would alter some of Darin’s tricks, he would try to make them look better but he would always give props to the person who developed the trick and was a firm believer that the inventor of the trick had the proper technique.

Fortunately, for all us that were really close to Mark here in the U.S. we were able to spend quality time with this superb example of a friend before he left us. From the time we got to spend together at Jeff Barton’s the night after the X Games with all his tour friends Andrew Adkinson, Parks, Shane, Betty, Josh, Daniel, Ike, Danny, Erik, Chad, Leslie etc... we were all watching Pootie Tang and sucking down a few Yuengling’s. Then the next day when Mark, Amy Sanders and myself spent a day in downtown Philly after everyone else had left, just sightseeing and enjoying each others company before our first class flight home that Mark had sweet talked the ticket agent into giving us. Even up to the very end Mark was all about pushing someone else to the next level of their stoke for the sport of wakeboarding.

I have video that we took the last day Mark was with us. He was teaching our friend Jacob how to hit a slider that somebody had installed in our riding spot while we were at the X games (what a surprise!). It was fully dark when Jacob and Mark got back in the boat and Mark was giving me a ration of Sh*%t because I hadn’t hit the slider yet. Of course, being the mature one, I wanted to get the sacks emptied and the boat on the trailer while we could still see and before the mosquitoes became too bad. But Mark knew what to say to get me stoked and I went out and slid that slider in pure darkness that night.

The rest of that evening and the next day seems like a bad dream, we pulled the boat out in pitch black. We loaded up for the hour long ride back to Southern Pines, had a post midnight dinner at the OUTBACK and went home. A typical weekend at the river with good friends that turned into a nightmare the next day when I went to awaken Mark. We are all still extremely confused and distraught over the loss of our friend and companion, Mark Kenney, who I have always felt was the world’s best freeriding wakeboarder.

What is important for everyone to remember or know is that Mark Kenney, who was well known within the pro community and not so recognized outside it, was the epitomy of a wakeboarder/friend. To expect anything more out of any individual than what Mark offered voluntarily as our friend and companion would be selfish. What we all need to do is share the stoke within our own community, to respect each other’s abilities and to congratulate each other on our accomplishments as Mark would have done for each and everyone of you.

What I would ask from the wakeboard community is to express your congratulations, condolences and feelings to the people who weren’t fortunate enough to be with Mark these past few months. First and foremost, his family. His mom, Carol, his dad, Gary and his brother Shane. Not to diminish any other family members feelings for Mark, but his mom Carol is suffering by far the most. I’ve never known any mom more caring and concerned for a child than Carol was for Mark. When almost everyone else had abandoned Mark, Carol Kenney, was the rock that Mark built his rebuilding foundation on. Mark loved his mom like no other child could, she was the foundation for his success as a wakeboarder and a man. Carol Kenney respected Mark for his abilities and his accomplishments and gave him the freedom to experience his full potential in the sport that he loved. Mark had the utmost respect for his family in the support that they offered him.

Mark’s family was not in a position to give him a "free ride" as a lot of the pro’s have, they gave him the emotional support and put the effort into promoting their son to give him the most they could. For them to be so far away without any firm answers on why their son has passed away has to be the most traumatic experience ever. I myself, am still having a hard time making sense of it all and having to re-live it time and time again is draining me emotionally. I’m sure speculation and rumor will inevitably arise from this unfortunate accident but I plead to the wakeboard community to keep every thought in perspective and to respect Mark and his family by keeping speculation and second guessing to yourselves. We, the people closest to Mark, we are still confused over what happened that evening and want Mark to be remembered for the way he lived, not how he left us.

Cheers to all for their friendship and support and hope that we may all be better mates for knowing MARK KENNEY!!!!!!

Missing my Mate like you wouldn’t believe..

Jay Lally