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Kiteboarders know the sport carries a risk

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August 05, 2012|By Jim Grawe | KWCH 12 Eyewitness News

(CHENEY, Kan.) — "It's the joy of being pulled across the water," kiteboarder Wes Jenkins says.  "I can have a really bad day, and I go out and kite and I don't think about anything else."

There's a small group of Kansans that enjoys the thrill...the challenge...the danger.

"It can be very dangerous if you get in the wrong situation," Jenkins says.  "You're fighting Mother Nature, and Mother Nature always wins."

Something went very wrong Saturday when a Wichita man kiteboarding at Cheney Lake ended up dead.  He was out enjoying the sport with several others including Wes Jenkins, who helped launch him launch for what turned out to be the last time.

"I was actually the last person to talk to him," Jenkins says.  "He had a big smile on his face.  He was ready to go."

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Jenkins says he and the other kiteboarders had finished for the day and were out of the water when they got word of the accident a mile across the lake.

"They said he was dragging through the water, and that's when somebody went out and into the water and pulled him in."

Jenkins says nobody in the group knows for sure what happened.

Jenkins say he himself was critically injured while kiteboarding ten years ago.

"I shattered my elbow and a bunch of other things, and was in the hospital for three weeks," Jenkins says.

Now Jenkins says this deadly accident makes him all the more conscious of the risk inherent in a sport like this.

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