Citation Needed - Competitive Watersliding

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/maximum-speed/   Taken from this article from Outside Magazine.

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To make sure your big deal is the best deal. That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S.ca.ca. Cargooros.ca. Hello and welcome to citation need at the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Noah and I'm going to be taking the first plunge tonight, but there are a bunch of people behind me in line waiting for me to hit the guts up to just go. First up, two men who weren't going to run near the pool until the sign tried to tell him they couldn't Cecil and Heath. I mean, I was never going to run anyway. I was going to gingerly step quickly. That was what I was going to do.

This is technically speedwalk. I'm doing the hip waggle like the speedwalkers. Put the whistle down. And also, John, this tonight are two men who are pretty sure it's okay to pee in the pool if you're near the filter, Tom and Eli. Why even have a filter if it's not for that? Exactly. You can do anything in the filter if the lifeguard isn't best.

Jesus. And before we get going, I want to ask you to imagine the five of us trying to compete at professional water sliding. And then you'll know why we rely on our pay. patrons to pay the bills. Do you like to learn how to join their ranks? Be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Cecil, what person, please, think, concept, phenomenon, or event are we going to be talking about today?

Today we're going to talk about competitive water sliding. All right. Heath, take it away. All right. This is from Outdoor Magazine by Josh Foward. Fucking love Outdoor Magazine. Yeah, so many good ones. 2010.

So that's how we're going to learn about it. Maximum Speed. Great start. Over in Germany, water sliding is a serious sport. Hiking up their speedos, athletes of all shapes have learned how to top 50 miles per hour with only the occasional bloody nose and forehead stitches. This I had to try. Okay, this sounds a lot like competitive having mass.

I'm doing so good. I'm winning. I'm winning. The fastest speed ever achieved on a water slide is 57 miles per hour. It was clocked in 2009 on the Kilimanjaro, a 164-foot high, 50-degree plummet at Aguas-Centes, a waterpark outside of Rio de Janeiro, by Jens Scherer, a German advertising executive. Scher 30, the reigning champion of competitive speed shooting, also holds four. Guinness World Records in the sport, including the one-day distance record for shooting 94 miles on a slide near Munich. That's like traveling all the way from New York to Philadelphia on the bare skin of your back. Wow, that sounds like Erica Kirk after she met J.D. Vance, guys. That's it. Show's over, guys. Pack it in. That's it. During those 24 hours, he slept for just

an hour and a half and climbed 30,000 vertical feet worth of steps. The equivalent of hiking from sea level to the summit of Mount Everest. Well, if there were steps, yes. Important.

Hey, Greg, just a reminder, our boss is not going to look over our proposal for the Jake Rue thing till Monday. He's setting the Guinness World Record for water sliding the mostest. Yeah, no, I also quit. That's what I said when saying.

He told me about that. It's like, there has to be another job. It can't be this one. Yeah, listen, I think the real question is here is, how many stranger band-aids do you think he was covered with by the end of that day? Oh, God. Just so too many, which is more than zero. Yeah.

Approaching 60 miles an hour on a water slide is not simply a matter of leaping and letting gravity do its thing. It is, though. It actually is, though. Speed shooting is a skill. An art. Now come. And there are people who take it very, very seriously.

This is serious, guys. Almost all of them are German. And there are more of them every year. Okay, so everything only German people take seriously is bad, right? So it's a really good rule of thought. That I'm not going to judge or it's just bad. They compete on teams with names like, slide fast, die, young, and they regularly travel many hours to weekend tournaments sponsored by water

parks across their country. Speed shooting, like skiing. It's skiing's in quotes. I don't know why. It's in quotes. Speed shooting like skiing is a catch-all term that encapsulates a range of events. Like skiing. It encapsulates skiing.

Okay, there's a range of events. from simple top to bottom timed runs to sliding marathons fastest to cover 26.2 horizontal miles. And this is running up the steps again? I want to see the slalom. They're leaping from slide to slide. You got adjacent slide to adjacent slide. I might have actually written this joke down somewhere in our notes,

but imagine the day that the water slide employers are like, hey guys so we are closing down for the day we're sending all the children home this advertising executive is going to run up and down our slide all day for a Guinness record but the good news is he might brown they're going to do shortcuts like mara cart and jump off the tracks too so they might die if you want to stay and hang out kids continuing for the moment it remains an exclusively German sport. It was placed in the national athletic firmament. Perhaps best resembles paintball in the U.S.

Those who compete are crazed. Those who don't find it odd and maybe even a little scary. I mean, it's scary that they get to vote. Not the men with the toy guns, though. They're not scary. When I first heard about speed shooting, this past winter, it didn't sound scary to me. It sounded freaking sweet. Okay, full disclosure, same.

So in February, I called up Sherer to find out how I could get in on the action. My timing couldn't have been better, Sherer told me. In late March, the German national speed shooting championship, the Kentucky Derby of the sports year-long circuit would be held in the Baltic Sea Resort Town of Sharbutz. To my surprise, Sherer noted that the contest was open. to anyone. Even more tantalizing, no American had ever competed in speed shooting, meeting the title of American champion was unclaimed. I decided I ought to do something about that. The hardest part about the Kentucky Derby of Water Slide competitions is getting that swimming cap

over the whole Maine. You got to get it all the way down. If you come a few days early, I would be happy to teach you my techniques, share graciously offered. You can crash on my couch. Crash on the couch is actually the first technique. It's kind of like two birds on one stone. I laid down on the couch that evening, after which Cher exclaimed, by God, you're a natural. Spoilers for what actually happens in the essay, Tom. Let me be frank. I'm suicidal. That was in all caps, by the way.

Let me be frank. Nobody would ever mistake me or someone who belongs in a major athletic competition. Good, because this isn't one. It's not. You're fine. My daily exercise regimen. You belong. Consists of a half-mile shuffle to the coffee shop to pick up a pair of banana-oat mini muffins.

I mean, that sounds like a competitive advantage in a having mass competition. Fortunately, Sherer hadn't seemed phased when I noted my lack of, of fitness. He gave me some basic advice to start prepping for what he described as rock in the tube. This guy eats two oat brand muffins every morning. He doesn't need any advice rocking the tube, okay?

The mini muffin Cecil, pay attention. You're in a tight and right. Training for speed shooting, he explained, is sort of like powerlifting. Absolutely. All I had to do was isolate a couple of core muscles and work them until

They were rock, solid. So long as your back and stomach are strong, you don't especially have to worry about the rest of the body, he said. Just like power lifting. Power lifting apparently. What? He also wanted me to find a local water slide and take some practice runs. Easier said than done when you live in New England and it's winter.

Ultimately, I committed to doing 50 sit-ups and 10 pull-ups each morning, a routine I remained fanatically devoted to for exactly eight days. Hey, if eight days is enough to get in shape for a sport, it's not a sport. Everybody is on. Hey, same for any number of days of doing 50 sit-ups and 10 pull-ups. Okay, if you could do 10 pull-ups, you could do any. That's amazing. That seems impossible to me.

He continues. Still, I allowed myself visions of glory as I flew into Zurich and took a train across the German border to Hattingen, the tiny town where Sher lives with his girlfriend, Sandra Westhoff, southern Germany's female speed shooting champion. That's cool. They're a speed shooting type. Sherr picked me up at the train station and drove us straight to the Aquasol water center in nearby Rottweil.

Facilities like Aquasol are quite popular in Germany, where long winters have people seeking out indoor exercise. Inside, there were saunas, hot tubs, lap pools, and a wicked four-story water slide, Chera called the Black Hole. Added in 2003, it features a 394-foot tube, the longest in

Southern Germany. The interior is made entirely of black fiberglass and is illuminated with trippy flashing lights. As in any competition-ready shoot, at each end, there was a pair of laser triggers measuring times down to the

middle of a second. This feels like having a holographic laser laser site on your air soft gun settled down, man. So this is absolutely true and Heath can back me up. I once installed

the laser site on a Nerf gun. That is 100% true and it's fucking awesome. It wasn't very accurate. The gun, the Nerf starts just go wherever the fuck they want to go. Sure, 5-8 and Lanky

toured me around wearing goggles and a snug dark blue speedo style suit, tagged with the URL of Miller Ice Power, a nanotech company that had given him some experimental racewear. Naming your waterslide speedo company, Miller Ice Power, feels a little on the nose, right? It's like if you had a football helmet company and you called yourself the CTE power. You can't name it.

Nanotech. Some guy with a fucking Ph.D. in molecular material science in a lab designing a speed. B-O made of ultra-low friction carbon nanotubes. I'm just glad I'm making a difference in the world. What the fuck is nanotech? He had earrings in his left ear and a Celtic tattoo on his right calf. A marathon runner and fitness fiend.

He got into speed shooting the year Aquasol opened its slide when his mother pointed out an announcement for Southern Germany's first championship in the newspaper. Sher entered and won as he has every year since. Jesus Christ. After capturing his first national title in 2003, he has gone on to become a minor celebrity,

appearing on German TV to teach Playboy bunnies to speed shoot or to demonstrate how to somersault down a slide. Okay, podcast listener Heath has put a video of someone somersaulting down a water slide in our notes and it is in fact just a guy doing a front flip really hard onto a water slide and then sliding down in what I imagine is unimaginable pain.

Well, if you imagined it, it's not unimaginable. I imagined. Despite his frequent use of point break style bro slang, Cherer goes about shooting with a teutonic seriousness. He sat me down in a plastic deck chair at the front of the bottom. black hole and attempted to elucidate the physics of shooting. I bet it's gravity. He dropped an apple off the tree. Yeah. It's all about the friction, dude, he said, rubbing his palms together. To go fast, I needed to minimize the surface area of skin and suit, making contact

with the slide. Basic speed shooting position involves crossing your ankles, tensing your core, and arching your back, so there are only three points of contact with the slide. the shoulder blades and a single heel. Cher lay down on the tile floor and showed me how he throws his arms up behind him, clenching his triceps against his ears to keep his head up. On the slide, the trick is to know when to maximize speed and when to dial it back. When Sherer comes around curves, his body is sometimes so far up the tube walls that he's looking down on the channel of one below.

But if you ride too high in the wrong spot, You can stall, crashing onto your stomach and killing your run. If not, sending you to the ER for stitches on your forehead. You'll also have to know how to manage the last 30 or so feet of the tube. When you reach top speed and even the most refined shooter tends to be out of control. Then there's the landing pool, which you want to enter with your legs tightly crossed. Hit it at 50 plus miles per hour, and you'll be lucky if a nasal enema and a mouthful of snob are the worst of it. You just have to slam your ass into the tube so your cheeks puff up like a top fuel parachute.

Oh, it is pretty dangerous, actually. And, you know, sure, you're potentially blowing out your colon with gallons of chlorinated water and the diluted piss of a hundred strangers. You know, the old German saying, something's wrong with us and we're not okay. We like very teutonic of you. Yeah. Even when they do everything right, hard-bodied athletes aren't always the fastest shooters. So to be clear, when they do everything right, they're not doing this sport at all. At home learning something.

Sometimes it's the cannonballs, 250-plus pound behemoths like six-time national champ, Christoph Aiden, and perpetual runner-up, Andreas Kunka. whom Sherer refers to with a hint of derision as the old schoolers. They have bellies that drape over their speedos, and they hurl themselves down slides with a single muscular heave. They have no technique, just stomachs, says Sherer. Ruining the sport I made up and I'm only the one who does by myself, and my girlfriend, just me and her.

Finally, there's a third group of sliders to which I belong. The Freaks. On my first ride down the black hole, I clocked a 22.39, a middling time, some four seconds slower than Sherers. Still, I was moving surprisingly fast, about 30 miles per hour by the end. By my 10th go, once I'd gotten a handle on how to arch my back, I was clearing the bottom laser in 20.35, a fairly decent time that had Sherer raising his eyebrows. I really want this guy to try to get him to go pro. Wow. That was nice. All right. How'd I do?

Oh, you were amazing. Oh, thanks. You're right. This is fun. No, Joseph, Joseph, you failed to understand. You took your time from 24 to 20 seconds in under an hour. It took me 11 years of work to do that, Joseph. This is your calling, Joseph. I know you are a writer, but the tube she is meant for you. You are the one we have been waiting for.

Yay, I did it in 18 seconds. Hey, great job, kiddo. Oh, maybe my hobby is stupid. Yeah, it's that one. Why are there adults here? I don't know, son. I don't know. It turns out of way.

It turns out that my most substantial bodily flaws make me perfectly suited to speed shooting. My slightly hunched posture causes my shoulder blades to comfortably pop out like bobsled runners. My flat ass is easily suspended off the fiberglass. My bird legs cut a tight, hydrodynamic profile. Even my love handles turn out to be an asset in a sport where having a little meat on the bones translates to faster times. I had just one physical disadvantage.

The continuous tract of Semitic fur that runs. runs from my lower back to my toes. After an especially dismal run of 21.71, I asked Cher, if my pursuitness was slowing me down. I'd go through that thing like a fucking pipe cleaner, man. Come on. 27 minutes, Cesar, you've ruined the slide.

Oh, shit, guys, so we pour Dish soap on Susan and wait 30 minutes. It's just like a really, really long pusher just to get me down, like really long. It's like a, biggest go-danger in the world. Just to shove me to the end of the day to sort of clean out the system.

He gets all the band-aids stuck there. I'm pulling him out of the hair of my arm. It's nasty. Can't do it. I don't eat some. Okay. Speaking of which, it continues, he bent over and took a

close look at my thighs. This is perfectly normal in shooting, he said as he eased me into his mouth. Jesus Christ, dude. God. If you want to increase the speed, we'll need to make a shaving session this evening, he said. I chuckled uncomfortably.

He didn't. But truly, if you keep your ass off the slide, it shouldn't matter, he added. For the sake of saving a few milliseconds, some of the most ambitious competitors shave or wax, but sharer finds them needlessly vain. I was just joking about shaving you. These razors are for my dog. My biggest problem was my baggy swimsuit. You know, you're not going to win in those, he said, examining my trunks.

In his quest for speed, Scherer has experimented with just about every possible form of swimwear, including the shark skin-like unitards favored by Olympic swimmers, and a type of low-friction foil. He wrapped around his entire body. He also coated his skin in soaps, oils, waxes, hydrophobic gels, and a kind of cream used to tenderize the udders of dairy cows. Oh, what? All of which are officially verboten in competition. But no matter, there is simply nothing faster than bare skin, he says.

Okay, so here's the amazing thing about that sentence. The answer is very obviously lube, right? Lube is the best for this. But every time someone in this guy's life has thought of telling him about lubricant, the product, they've then pictured him slathering himself in lube and then throwing himself down yet another public water slide. And they've been like, yeah, man, skin is probably best. You're right. I certainly can't think of any thing that makes you go faster in wetness. Skin is the best lube. That's what they say.

That's the German slogan. Even a few square inches of speedo can cause unnecessary drag. Okay, so we're inches away from sure suggesting, you know, why don't we both go down naked, huh? You and I? As I stood behind him before a run, late in our session at the black hole, he reached back and jacked the rear triangle up his crack like a G-string. I'll see you at the bottom, man, he said.

Then he dried his hands on a towel, leapt into the tube with an exaggerated, mule kick and slid down on nothing but flesh. This is a fattish thing, right? Am I? Not at all, he said, as he eased me into his mouth. Stop saying eased. Stop it.

Stop it. No more. It's always the kind of wrong. I'm doing a control after eased. We're done with the east. Sometimes it has to go in not easily. To the mouth. I mean, come on, this guy does not ease.

Speed shoot into my mouth. mouth man while I shave you so too tonic am I right? The water slide is such an obvious idea that it's hard to believe

was actually invented like the light bulb or the telephone by a single individual in a single burst of inspiration even harder to believe is that it didn't happen until 1971. That was the year a California campground owner named Dick Crowell on a vacation in Hawaii, rode a natural flume, and decided he'd be the first person to build his own. He returned to Placerville,

dug out a five-acre lake at his campground in the Sierra foothills, built a mound out of all the surplus dirt, and covered it with guneite, the cement and sand mixture that lines swimming pools. Oh. Visitors to the camp. Yeah, that sounds like a terrible. It really does. Terrible material. Visitors to the campground rode the 350-foot slide on inch-thick gym mats.

Hey, guys. I think I invented something. It's like down, but wetter? It's wet down. Yeah. Invented not until 1971. From Northern California, Kraus invention. You got weird after the divorce, Dick.

Can I tell you? I know you took it hard, but what the fuck is all this, man? No, get the gym mad away from me. Why is it wet? Fuck off. We're not coming back here. Okay, but it all worked out. People love this thing. Crowell's invention spread rapidly to other campgrounds. All those early slides were made of guneite, which meant they ripped up the back and could be written only on mats. Then, in 1976, Disney introduced the world's first commercial fiberglass.

slide at Disney World's River Country in Orlando. Okay, so the fact that the word commercial is modifying that suggests a really interesting story this dude's leaving out, right? The year after that, wet and wild, the world's first water park opened in Orlando. The fiberglass slides, smooth, lightweight, modular, created an entirely new form of thrill. The Body Ride. Just man, water, and gravity. The late 70s and early 80s saw an explosion of highly questionable designs up and down both

coasts. Infamously, Action Park in Vernon, New Jersey made the first attempt at a vertical loop-to-loop with a long straight tube that ended in a comically tight curly queue. A trapdoor had to be built into the top of the loop to rescue stuck sliders. wouldn't be a problem if people just wore my carbon nanotubes spidos grumbled Hans, the material scientist, as he fashioned his noose. My neck is going to slide right through this thing. It's crazy. It's too lubed up for me. He ease into the news.

Oh, he can say it. Just slide in too fast, smash right into his face. We got a slowness. It's too easy. Those who did make it around the bend sometimes had broken noses and other injuries to show for it, earning the place the nickname Traction Park. I think it was also class action park. The tube stayed open for exactly one month before it was shut down by the New Jersey Carnival Amusement Ride Safety Board. Never a good sign if that's what I said to you down.

Hey, this is dangerous for New Jersey, guys. The Carnival Board thinks this is. Likewise, in Singapore, a multi-lane race. racing slide sent riders several feet in the air as they crested a hill. Riders often landed on top of one another in the wrong lanes, and it was eventually closed. Heath, you got to find out who that happened to so hard they shit themselves and threw up at the same time, and then you have to fight them so that you can have his power. The early slides were basically bunny runs, says Rick Hunter, a former member of the Canadian

National Ski Team, whose Ottawa-based company, ProSlide, is a global leader in the waterslide industry. Now we understand compounding curves, he says. It's like driving a race car. If you're going into a curve, you don't rip on the wheel, you turn slowly. We put you on the wall, shorten the radius, and hold you there. Also, the wheel here is your flapping ass cheeks with your speedo shoved up there like dental floss. That's what the wheel is.

I'm sorry, but we've learned a lot about hurling people down tubes as one of them sentiments that sounds weird in any context. It doesn't matter to how true it is. That seems weird. ProSlide and its competitors have produced a number of stunning slides in recent years, the most expensive of which cost about $4 million to a wreck. At the summit plummet, a 12-story drop at Disney World's Blizzard Beach, even an unskilled shooter in top 50 miles per hour.

Jesus fucking Christ. Thanks to a 66 degree slope. Others, like the Wildebeest at Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana, add features but require the use of inflatable rafts. The Wildebeest, the world's longest water coaster at 1710 feet in length, includes sections in which riders are carried uphill with magnets. Oh, you're done. Just that's they're carried up with magnets. That's okay.

To use their magnets. After they get that COVID vaccine, it works. Oh, sure. Eat some steak. Eat some steak. At the Blue Bayou Waterpark in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the azooka, the largest tornado slide, drops riders 80 feet into a 70-foot-wide funnel

where they swing like a pendulum experiencing weightlessness. A welcome contrast for Louisiana. who typically only experience hopelessness or homeless. Of course. That sounds like the worst water thing to ever happen in Louisiana, I would say. Of course. None of these slides was created with competitive shooters in mind. Hunter told me he'd never heard of German speed shooting.

Sounds pretty wild, he said. In fact, the fact that I included him in my article at all is pretty blatant word count padding anyway. Sherer dismisses most of the elaborate twisters crafted for the water park masses. I'm not terribly impressed by any of them, he says. Yeah, same, bro. Still, when a new slide opens anywhere in Europe, he's often called in to act as a test pilot. The week before I showed up, he had been at the Wave near Innsbruck, Austria, trying out Wild Pig, the world's first double loop slide. The loops are tilted 45 degrees off vertical to prevent stalling.

The parks management set him down with a box strapped to his stomach to measure G forces on turns. In order to gain the approval of the TIV, the TUV, something like that, a government-affiliated German safety organization. That's what that is. Riders can't exceed 2.6 G's. Cher says he topped out at nearly six. What is this? What is is the person? people from the government can't go as fast as me.

The slide is still considered legal, he explained. Okay, cursory search to understand G-Force things reveals three other things. One, that specialized training and flight suits are typically required to prevent losing consciousness at six Gs. Two, it takes an acceleration rate of around 132 miles per hour per second to achieve six Gs. And three, he is full of shit. Tom, he had that nanotech shark skin stuff going on.

It sounds an awful lot like he's got to register his speed shooting as a lethal weapon when he moves to a new town. I could kill you with nothing but my popped out shoulder blade if I had to. Meanwhile, Now just let me ease you into my mouth, he said. Wait, will you stop? Nut maxing. Meanwhile, Sherr and other shooters have started building slides of their own. Recently, Shera hired a carpenter to construct a small, perfectly vertical loop-de-loop,

the first since Action Parks. His grand dream is to build a 900-foot kamikaze, taller than most Manhattan skyscrapers. He and his partner in the project, Rolf Alderdeson, another shooter, have been in talks with the government of Namibia about building the slide into the side of a major sand dune. Yeah, those are famously stable. Last year, Sherer and his team built a mock-up of their Namibian kamikaze

on a smaller industrial sandpile in Bavaria. After digging a trench down the 360-foot hill and lining it with plastic slip and slides, they brought in a local fire engine to pump water to the top. The first slider, a TV stuntwoman named Fundevanroy, ended up flipping end overend and Jesus, he's the last at the bottom, bruised and with a bloody nose, having just missed, getting decapitated by the boom of a video camera.

It feels like it would be more of a slice than a boom. I don't know about a boom, but... All right, well, it feels like this article is starting to gain a bit of momentum, so it's time to pump the brakes with a little apropos of nothing. And so I says to him, no, they're going to come check the codes after you build. You have to submit the plans. Of course, of course, yes. Gentlemen, I am here.

Ah, there he is the speed demon. The national champion. Indeed, I hear your fellows have a little something new for me to test out. Oh, yeah, big time. So, as you know, a lot of people can't handle the pure speed of a water slide. Of course, of course. And so a lot of people are, you know, throwing up on the slides. Totally puke city.

Yes. So we were wondering, you could test this new prevention we're working on. We're thinking of putting a thin layer of helium inside the slide. Oh, yeah? Yeah, we believe that will give us access a protection layer. Wow. Right. So what you want you to do?

You are to take this balloon, take big half of it, and then make yourself throw up as you go on this slide. Oh, but I don't grow up on the water slide. Right. So here's the thing. You're going to make yourself throw up. You're going to do it yourself. With your fingers.

How do I? I think you'll start with your hand in your mouth like this. Like this. Don't forget the balloon. The balloon, very important. All right, we will be down here measuring. As well. You think he's ever going to figure out we're just fucking with him?

No, I do not, Franz. I do not. Yep, just like that. You need to push harder, though. Harder. Much, much harder. Hey, pie guest listener. I'm no illusions.

And I'm Cecil something Italian. And we're cat guys, which means that we can tell you that the worst thing about having a cat is when they speak with the voices of your dead loved ones. What? No, it's the litter box, man. Now with my cats, it's not. Okay, well, with my cats, it's the litter box, and that's why there's Boxy Pro.

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That's why I, Noa, Lusions, personally endorse BoxyPro. All right, Noah, I'm sold. Where do I sign up? If you're trying to switch in litters looking for the one, get Boxy at B-O-X-I-E-C-A-T.com.com. It's the last litter you'll switch to. Enjoy 30% off with the code citation at Boxicat.com slash citation. That's B-O-X-I-E-C-A-T-com forward slash citation. All right, Noah, thanks. So I'm sorry, wait, the voices of your dead loved ones?

I think it's more of like a channeling thing. Well, that's not better. I didn't say it was better. I was just clarifying the process. Got it. And we're back when we last left off. This dude was trying to make being composed of matter sound athletic. So back to you, Heath.

Sure had to go to work on my second day in Germany. So he sent me to the local sporting goods store with Westhof to buy a speedo. He'd offered to let me borrow one of his own banana hammocks, but after witnessing his self-wedgy technique, I politely declined. Either way, he seemed deaf to the erotic undertones of my shopping for minimal coverage swimwear with his girlfriend. But having never worn Teddy Whitey's, much less a Speedo, I needed the help. Did he think it went on his face? I don't know what? Yes.

Yeah, also, dude, I wouldn't be too worried about the Speedo giving. off erotic undertone. You're true, man. You're fine. After sorting through racks of dangling nylon suits, I selected a blue and white number and retreated behind a fitting room curtain to tug it on. When I shyly pulled back the curtain, I asked Westoff if I should maybe go up a size.

She had me do at 360, pausing without humor to eyeball my junk and shook her head. I just hope this meat inspector graded it with a little stamp afterwards. Jesus. Yeah, right. Yeah, she selected a prime suit for me. It was fine, but it wouldn't have been my choice. I bet there's humor in it and her telling.

That afternoon, Sharon and I went back to Aquasol. In my new suit, I was immediately a full second faster than I'd been the previous evening. And my times dropped by a few milliseconds on each successive run. After two hours at the slide, our heels and shoulder blades raw, Sharra and I retired to the heated saltwater pool. I want to show you something, he said. Finally, Tom, get it ready. Thank you. Get it in the chamber. What's easing.

What's easing now, Tom? It's ease it. Ease it. In a saltwater pool, no less. I want to show you something, he said, as we relaxed amid a group of elderly women. Oh, hey. We're turning into a little bit of a turn, but I'm in. I'm in.

We are job. Read the room, buddy. he swam out into the middle of the pool, floated for a moment on his back, then began sinking. I don't float, he said, standing up again. I can't explain it.

I never. Is that why you're so fast? I asked. Why would that have anything to do with that? No idea. No idea. I really don't know why I am the best. I often wonder, he said,

I mean, I use the same technique as all the other. I guess maybe it's my dense bones. Must be my lack of an inner monologue and synesthesia. Everyone can float. It's just a little harder for some people. Stop acting like you're in a Y.A. novel. God damn.

I think perhaps I am a merman exiled for my dying realm at birth. The next day, we took an eight-hour train ride across the country to Sharbutz. The championship was being host. hosted by the Ossi Resort and Spa, a five-star beachfront hotel. We checked in and hit the slide for practice runs. Everything about the Ossi Tube was world-class. Settle down you, but on like three of these things, man. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Please don't interrupt. The curves were tight and nicely timed. The changes in grade were surprising, surprising. And the drop-off near the end was exhilarating. A technician had spent the week before the competition caulking every fiberglass seam with silicone to make it extra smooth. Video cameras were installed in the ceiling of the tube

so that a gallery of spectators... Spectators! Nope. Could watch the shooters negotiate several of course's more difficult turns on a bank of six screens. Yeah, yeah, these guys are sliding. I'd like a divorce. I'd want to be clear.

For all that effort, I was pretty sure that about half the 117 competitors who'd shown up were only there because it sounded like a fun way to spend a weekend afternoon. The age range was impressive. The youngest entrant was eight. The oldest, 74. Yeah, most of them were surprised to learn that they had entered a competition at all. Yeah, actually. So line is long this weekend, right? but then there were the real competitors.

Like golfers studying the Greens before a major championship, we wanted to know these curves and banks intuitively. We? So I'm sorry, how real are the real competitors? Well, he's including himself after 80 fucking pull-ups spread over a week. And sit-ups. We kept anxious eyes on each other's times. Let your butt hit the slide a bit,

Sherer advised me. You don't want the others to know your true speed. And Zen, when's they least expect it, you flip around and you shit yourself. That's what we call. Getting the Noss. The As-Noss. Like what?

If they know how fast you really are, then they will also go fast. Down to water slide. What are they going to do about it? What is that strategy in racing like this? It's just, they're always going to try to go their fastest against you. I'm going to go faster, but I didn't know if you were going to go fast. It's fucking gravity, man.

You can't make it gravity faster. I'm going to slow it down and just barely beat this guy. I know the chances are low, but if there's a professional fasted water person like Katie Ledecky who listens, please go to this one year and just absolutely trash these fucking weirdos and then never go back again. Just once, please. She's just doing the backstroke and beating them on. There was a group of particularly amped guys whom Scherer kept referring to as

The Weirdos Glasshouses man, fuck It's okay to take water sliding seriously But for these guys, it's the meaning of their life, he told me. The weirdos are always saying That guy is cheating or that guy oils his back. They don't have jobs or educations. One of them is mental.

disabled. Hey man. Fucking what. Hey. Hey. Same to ibid for Eli's Questia. I would also like to know

fucking what. Hey, do they dwell on that? What did they talk more about that sentence for the rest of the arts? Jesus. Nope.

He continues. The weirdos were easy to pick out. She was yelling slurs at that moment. They were the ones hollering obnoxiously after good times

slapping the water with their palms and yelling Shisa after the bad ones. One of them, on a practice run just for me, stepped up to the start position, dropped the back of his suit around his thighs, and launched his completely bare ass down the slide. The training regimen for this is to switch out your bidet sprayer for a water pick.

I think if you do that. Just ease it in there. There had been bad blood between Scher and the weirdos. Ever since the group banded together. This is amazing. There's like politics in this fucking world. They ban it together to oust one of Sherer's close friends

from the presidency of the German race sliding federation amid accusations of financial impropriety. Scherer countered by accusing one of the weirdos of pedophilia. Jesus Christ, what? The guy had emailed Scherer

asking for pictures of some of the younger competitors. Sherer tried and failed to have him banned for life from national competitions. He pointed him out as we waited in line at the top of the slide. Stay away from that guy, he said. He's weirdo number one.

This is how normal people feel when I try to tell them about podcast drama, huh? Eli, this is how we feel when you try to tell us about podcast drama. In speed shooting, too much training can be counterproductive. That was just literally true of all sports. Yeah, it's the very nature of

too much as a concept, really. Yeah, it's right in the word two there. Because the more you slide, the more likely you are to bruise your points of contact with the fiberglass. When we went back to our hotel, I examined my damage in the bathroom mirror. I had a pair of

red bull's eyes on my upper back, surrounded by blue clouds of bruising. Sherr smirked when I showed him. White skin red cuts, blue bruises very American, he said. His own left elbow was bleeding from a bang-up coming down off a high turn.

Ralph May, one of Sherr's friends from Aquasol, had a hip so bruised he could barely walk. All the attention from our fan makes it worth the pain. Sad Ralph, alone in his hotel room crying. With that one, Van. Over beers at a traditional northern German restaurant, I asked Cher whether he thought I had any chance in the championship. I'm not going to tell you you're going to win, he said. I just can't do that.

But it's possible you could make the finals. He shrugged, anything is possible. Because this isn't a real sport, right? The event was split into three divisions. Women competed in their own group, and the men were put into welterweight and heavyweight classes, with the dividing line at 70 kilograms. Women all weigh the same.

About 155 pounds. I swear that under normal circumstances, my 5-8 frame would be a fair distance south of that, but I'd spent the better part of the winter, pulled up with shingles and overdoing the mini-monds. At the official way in, the digital scale put me at 66.7 kilos, or 147 pounds. At 5'8? I was going to be one of the heaviest competitors in the welterweight class, a certain advantage. Even better. Of the 17 competitors who registered as welterweights,

three came in overweight and had been bumped up. My competition was 13 lanky teenage boys and an eight-year-old. I'm only in this weight class because of some mini muffins, if you know what I mean. My dad said not to let you talk to me. I'm just picturing him staring down this eight-year-old at the way in like an MMA. Dana White has to break him up. The morning consisted of three time trials. The 10 competitors with the lowest combined time

would then advance to the finals in the afternoon, where two more runs would decide the medal rankings. Wait, I'm sorry, so making the finals meant he had to be in the top 10 in a heat of 15, where everyone else is just whatever kids showed up at the water park that day, and Sherer said he might make two finals. Jesus. Whicher's name was announced

Most people do. Which is announced over the loudspeaker for his first slide of the day. The official timekeeper, a man wearing camouflage hunting pants hiked above his ankles,

fluorescent orange suspenders, a cowboy hat and aviator sunglasses introduced him as the most famous water slider in the world. The crowd of three dozen spectators

arrayed on plastic tech chairs in front of the landing pool who did it in clap in rhythm this sounded more and more like a duck dynasty book signing man Jesus Christ

so sad plastic all right also it is worth noting that there are 117 competitors and 36 spectators

that map pretty much sums up this article yeah it's not everybody doesn't even get one spectator to share your spectators.

I would not stay for that. A good handful of the moms were like, okay, tell me how you do, and whatever the moment. It goes, hey, stay away from all the adults. Don't drown. Bye. Or do.

My own introduction a few minutes later was no less raucous. As I stepped up to the slide, a German techno remix of John Denver singing, Take Me Home Country Roads. What is that? The attack no way makes of that.

That blared to the same. That blared to the system. A respectful, if slightly confused, nod to my home country. After our three morning runs, Sherer was in first place in the heavyweight division, and I was on my way to making my country proud ahead of all the teenagers but one. a 17-year-old from Team Vidal named Janick Arns who weighed in a kilo heavier than me.

So actually he had an advantage. Also, the sun was in my eyes on that run. I didn't sleep well last night, so like, really, if I had gotten a good night's sleep. He had four Capri's Sons before he went out there. That's basically performance-enhancing. That is.

You're saying it. At the top of the slide, there's no juice. for our two deciding afternoon runs. I asked Arons if he thought that extra kilo accounted for the 18th of a second that separated us. I think it's this, he said, turning around. He popped his shoulder blades out. They protruded like a pair of limbs.

You could have hung a hat on each of them. He was a freak like me. Why has no one thought of juicing with Viagra and then going down belly first like a monofoil? feels like the best way. Oh, this sport is it ready for you, Cecil. I got into position for my first run, looking over my shoulder at the line of welterweights, waiting behind me, then up at the camera,

looking down at me. I took a deep breath. If I'd come all this way to Germany, I might as well go for it. I reached back, twisted the seat of my speedo into a tight little rope, yanked it up my tush, then flung myself down the slide.

When in Germany, I thought to myself and opened my ass wide for adventure. Halfway down, the water was spraying so hard up my nose that I couldn't breathe. Shoulder blades were burning. My ass was so far off the slide, I could feel a breeze between my cheats. Then, on the third to last turn,

catastrophe struck. I became self-aware. My momentum carried me so high up the wall that I flipped and fell several feet before landing face first on the tube banging my arm on the way down. I rode the last two turns on my stomach before I was able to write myself.

When I got out at the bottom, I looked up at... When I got out at the bottom, I looked up at my time. 22.51, a full second slower than Arend's slowest run. First, the black lady died on last week's show and now this, you guys gotta stop doing this to me, okay? Hanging on by a threat. I'm sure, whose own gold was secure

after a blazing first run of 18.54, was waiting at the landing pool steps. He put his arms on my shoulders. Jesus. Something's about to get eased in. Come on now. You need to relax your body more as you go around. Something is getting in.

From now on, there are no more errors. Rock the tube, Josh. That's why you got to ease it. You got to relax and rock the tube. Okay. I sighed and thought, when in Germany, and opened my ass wide again for adventure. Relaxing my body. East it in to rock the tube.

Yeah. A hundred percent true. I look this up. There are no rock the tube t-shirts. We are sitting on a mother-fucking parked that website. What? What? Okay.

Cicel. Rock. You've. The tube. Not a. single Rock the Tube t-shirt available for Furnches. Amazing. All right. Well, there we go.

Sarah. As I climbed back up the steps to the top of the slide. Strings rose. An eagle card. Mr. Miyagi gave me a nod of approval. Oh, sorry. It's my chair. Sorry, sorry.

Those words rang in my head. I went G-string again. But this time, I let my body go limp around the turns. I could feel myself accelerating even faster than on my previous run. Just as I was about to flip on the same turn that had done me in, spread my legs slightly. Okay. Nell-e-in-day-in-to-stay. To stay upright. At the end of the tunnel, there was a moment of quiet. Then I hit the pool, and German techno exploded in my ears. When I climbed out, my legs were shaking. I looked up at Cher, who flashed me a pair of shockers.

What? The hand symbol? Like, like, and pointed excitedly up at my time. 21.93 seconds. Still second place

behind our ends, but a righteous finish behind a 17 year old. I wrapped a towel around my waist and pumped my fist for the cheering crowd. Sweet home,

Alabama. Wait, Eli Techno. We're like, now. We home al-zabal-ma. All the blue. Amazing. Oh, my God.

Also, when you guys check your text after this record, there are like 11 Rock the Tube T-shirt designs waiting in your text right now. Just so you know. A podium was brought out. Cameras flashed. A middle-aged

blonde in panty-hose and flip-flops hoisted a plastic chalice. With the logo of the Ossi Resort and Spa and handed me a certificate. I participated. Wow. For my second place finish, I received a snack basket. Sorry. It's a plastic chalice that is certificate.

I thought you could go faster next time. I received a snack basket filled with German delicacies. Herring flas in tomato sauce. A box of musely. This is so fucking sick. A jar. I got a cheap jargutery plate and a plate. Wait.

Don't answer yet. Pea stew. Come on. and Rockworth sausages. Who's Brock? I left them in my hotel room

along with my wet. I used them into my mouth. And at the end of summarized what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? Don't do this. No, rock the tube, man. Rock the tube.

Also rock the tube. Get your rock the tube t-shirt and citation you need it.com or whatever. the fuck our website is. Get it. Don't do anything that somebody named Jens Scherer tells you to do. I think it's just a good rule of thumb. All right. And are you ready for the quiz? Let's do it. All right, Heath. Germany's weird. And this is not a sport. What real German idiom below best sums up this article.

A, I think my pig is whistling. B, lid closed, monkey dead. C. Real? That's sausage to me. Or D. Play the offended liver sausage. What?

I thought it was definitely going to have some sort of ease in the sausage. I'm going to take a guess. It's C. That's sausage to me. It means I'm indifferent. So it is actually how that's sausage to me. Me too. All right.

Burn to the sausage. I'm going to answer a lot of questions like that from now on. I feel a sausage about this. All right, Heath. What's the best nickname for a water slide wingman sidekick? I don't know if he's a little sausage to me. Sorry, go ahead. A, speedo calycincyon, B.

Samwise Ganges string. C. Wedgy Antilles or D. Goose. Okay. Samwise Ganges string is excellent. It's got to be B. Correct.

Excellent. All right, Heath. It's obvious that what this sport needs is its own feel-good 90s sports movie. What should it be called? A. Harry Pitts of Fire. What? Chariots of Fire.

Thank you. Bruce D. It's because it's got like, you know, Holocaust in it and Eli has been focused on that. No, Harry Pitt. Like, Harry, he's got a hairy armpits. That's the process. Yeah, I know. It combined both.

You nailed it. Bruce D. Krusty. Yep. Bruce D. See? See? Pool running.

It is 100% sea pool running. I own that on VHS. I've watched it a good 200 times. Jesus Christ. All right. Well, obviously the winner. Feel the rhyme. Get on up.

It's water slide time. Yes. Pool running. Rossetube. I'm doing some generations for some black guys on the rocket tube t-shirt. Obviously, Heath is the winner. The wean are this week. God. Yep, they are.

All right, let's hear from Noah next week. All right. Well, for Heath, Cecil, Eli, and Tom, and the whole speed shooting community, really? I'm Noah, thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week, and by then I'll be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear me and Heath on the scathing atheist. Heath and Eli and God off a movies. Eli and Tom, on Dear Old Dads, Tom and Cecil and Cisle on Cognitive Dissinence

and Cecil and Marsh on the No Rogan Experience. I know others of us are on some of those other shows and stuff, but I want to do the Daisy Chain thing. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod or leave a five-star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes. Connect with us on social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citation pod.com. You guys got my times?

Yep. Now one more run with the G-Force measure. This looks like a VCR. Come on now. It's not a VCR. No, not as all. Say, make G-Force machines as well to measure this. D forces.

Is that you? Is that you? Okay, her nerve.