“I’ve fractured a rib, been bruised quite a few times and been winded a lot. But it’s just a fantastic sport.” So says 24-year-old Wesley Emms, a trainee solicitor with Doncaster law firm Keeble Hawson, of his extra-legal passion: water skiing.

Such is Emms’ devotion to the sport — reputedly invented in 1922 when Ralph Samuelson strapped two boards to his feet and rigged a clothesline to a boat on Lake Pepin, Minnesota — that he’s currently suffering severe withdrawal symptoms.

“It’s a seasonal sport, running from March to late September,” he says. “From then on, the lakes in the UK get too cold. So I spend my winter weekends keeping in shape as best I can for the new season. The trouble is, whatever you do, it never prepares you enough for being towed behind a boat again.”

No surprise. A good water skier will travel at up to 75 mph over the water. “It’s an incredibly physical sport,” Emms says. “A lot of water skiers reckon that we’re accelerating and decelerating over a course faster than a performance sports-car.”

Coming off a pair of skis at that speed is a recipe for injury, but Emms counts himself lucky only to have amassed a collection of bruises and a solitary fractured rib over nearly two decades of water skiing. “I’ve skimmed across the water like a stone,” he says, “but luckily I’ve never hurt myself badly.”

Emms began water skiing when he was just five years old – the “perfect time,” he says, to start a sport in order to ensure its mastery. His father was a keen water skier, at one time ranked fifth in England, and Emms was only too keen to follow in his footsteps.

“By the time I was five or six, Dad was a member of Lound Waterski Club, near Retford in North Lincolnshire. We’d spend every spare moment there as I grew up.”

Now in his last seat — commercial property — as a trainee solicitor, Emms reckons that at under-18 level he might just have been good enough to represent England. “But then further education came along, so my development as a water skier went on hold.”

Not that an onlooker could tell. Emms excels at all three water skiing disciplines: slalom, trick and jump water skiing. “It’s unusual for people to do all three,” he says, before reeling off the kind of moves he regularly practises: sideslides, reverse 180s, toe tricks, wake-outs and wake-ins and, of course, “normal 360s – both ways”.

His personal best? Two-and-a-half buoys at 14 metre rope length at 36 mph, which might well sound Greek to anyone not familiar with the sport. But if, like so many sub-cultural sporting activities, the jargon is impenetrable to outsiders, Emms’ enthusiasm is transparent.

In summer, he will take an afternoon off in good weather — work permitting — to get to Lound, where, with his father, he will waterski until sunset. His best performance to date is winning three silver medals in the Lound Open, in 2005, in the three slalom, trick and jump events.

Emms has also been known to make trips to Florida in January and February, where he will “get some sun and train at the Performance Ski and Surf Centre” – a dedicated water skiing facility, one which is no doubt rather warmer than that at Lound.

Is water skiing an antidote to the stress of the law? “Oh yes,” he says. “It’s physically demanding and shattering, but completely exhilarating. You’re always skiing against yourself, too, so you’re not just flying around at high speeds, you’re challenging yourself.”

But however much he trains over the winter, Emms knows that the longed-for day in March when the waterskiing season kicks off again will be tough. “My body will ache and I won’t be able to walk straight for days,” he says. But it will be worth it.

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