Swimming through Lyon (4)

Hydrospeeders ride torso-length boards through rapids. The sport came into being in the 1970s, when a man named Robert Carlson opened a rafting gear business on the West Coast of the U.S. and started teaching water rescue classes. When the boards used kept flipping out under the riders, Carlson developed a new board, the Carlson Riverboard. However, river guides had other plans and started riding them for fun. With this, riverboarding was born.
At the same time, a group of guides in the French Alps had a similar idea and developed their own boards called hydrospeeds, which is where the name hydrospeeding comes from. Whitewater athletes in New Zealand also got in on the action and developed their own version, the sledge.

European riders also developed a foam version (called a hydrospeed) of the plastic board to reduce weight and avoid injuring each other during collisions that sometimes resulted from one rider travelling downstream and another facing upstream while surfing a hydraulic. Today, homemade foam hydrospeeds are found primarily among European riders. A growing sport in North America, riverboarding has grown in popularity from media exposure and the emergence of commercial operators running riverboard trips.