Former U.S. president Barack Obama is trying some new and
dangerous water sports that the Hawaii native had to miss out on for safety
reasons while serving in the White House.
Obama, whose eight years
as president ended last month when he was succeeded by Donald Trump, learned to
kiteboard while vacationing last week on a Caribbean island owned by British
billionaire and adventurer Sir Richard Branson, who published an account of
their trip on Tuesday.
Photographs and video on
the website of Branson’s Virgin Group show the former president, a life-long
surfer, figuring out the increasingly popular sport in which people ride a
board while being pulled behind a kite.
“Being the former
president of America, there was lots of security around, but Barack was able to
really relax and get into it,” Branson wrote.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, were spotted last week in the
British Virgin Islands, and people posted photos of them on social media.
Branson owns 120-acre (48-hectare) Moskito Island, which is part of the
archipelago.
Kiteboarding was chosen in
2012 as a sport for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, replacing
windsurfing. The decision was criticised at the time because the sport can be
lethal, and it was reversed within months.
According to Branson, Obama
studied the pastime for two days and flew a kite from the beach, “as if going
back to being a child again,” before heading out into the waves.
Branson was trying to
learn a similar sport, foil boarding, which uses a modified board that rises a
few feet above the water. He wrote that he challenged the ex-president over
which of them would succeed first.
Obama triumphed, he said,
by kite boarding for 100 meters (328 feet).
“After
all he has done for the world, I couldn’t begrudge him his well-deserved win,”
Branson wrote.
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