After months of sweating on his world ranking, McKinnon managed to hold down his top-five spot at the end of October, the cut-off date in the criteria for an invitation to the highly-regarded Masters.

“I just squeaked into fifth spot in the junior boys jump,” McKinnon said.

“I was definitely sweating a lot on that – for the last four months I’ve been checking the list. Everyone hangs out until the last day in October waiting to see if there’s anyone who can sneak in front of you at an event somewhere.”

The Masters welcomes only the top five in each discipline. Even if a competitor is unable to attend, there are no ‘reserve’ spots opened up.

It will be another shot at the elite level after McKinnon travelled to the junior world championships in Chile in January, where he finished 18^th overall. 

“I didn’t ski to the best of my ability in a couple of events but it was a good experience,” he said. “It was a different experience. I’d done other international events before (like Asia and Oceania) but this was all the top juniors in the world condensed.

“And you’re representing your country on the big stage. If we all skied to the best of our abilities we had a chance of going well in the teams event so there were some nerves, the pressure of other people relying on you.”

The 17-year-old’s pet event is the jump, ahead of trick and slalom. He got the bug as soon as he took up waterskiing six years ago.

“It’s hard to explain. Right from the start, just the feeling – it’s a pretty awesome thing to be able to spend your days standing on water and doing stuff you didn’t think was really possible on water,” he said.

“Running the slalom for the first time, a lot of people describe it as a feeling you want to just keep repeating… it’s like an addiction.

“I guess that’s enough to get you hooked and then the people you meet travelling and competing, that just doubles the you could say.” 

McKinnon receives support from the Southern Sports Academy, under its individual athlete program.

“They’re really good,” he said. “I’ve got two scholarships through them and last weekend I did the leadership camp at Borambola. 

“As an individual athlete, that’s definitely helped me understand the concepts in sport better.”

Right now, McKinnon is off the water, recovering from a shoulder injury. He aims to be back in training in the new year in time to defend his junior jump title at the Moomba Masters – a world class event in Melbourne in March, where he also finished fourth in trick and placed third overall. 

In between work on the farm, McKinnon does much of his ski training out of Port Macquarie. His schooling is by distance education and he’ll complete year 12 next year. 

But 2018 will also be a big one on the water. There’s that trip to the United States for starters, and the step up to seniors is looming.

“Making the top five was one of the big goals, which I’ve just achieved,” he said.

“I guess now the big goal is to keep on keeping on – moving into the open event, I can move up in speed and start competing against some of the bigger guys, start getting scores out there and try to compete for some of the top spots in Australia.”