About Radical Sports
At Radicals Sports we aim to make your holiday in Tobago as enjoyable as possible. We always want clients to have a great time and come back again and again. By offering a cool, relaxed atmosphere we hope that our guests would feel more like friends than just tourists. Like at one of our famous Beach Party and BBQ which is followed by a bon fire, where we just sit on the sand and enjoy the Caribbean ambience. Or a Rum Punch Party at the center with African drummers, where clients get a chance to entertain us with their version of the limbo.
About our team
Rikky Knowles was born in Jersey, British Isles, he has always loved water sports from an early age. At 13 he started Scuba Diving taking his Open Water certification, at 16 he became a PADI Master Scuba Diver. At age 19 he became a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor, and First Aid Instructor, at that time one of the youngest instructors in the UK. At 20 he became a Master Scuba Diver Trainer and moved from Jersey to Grand Cayman for 16 months to work as an Instructor. At 22 he became a PADI Staff Instructor and returned to Jersey to set up Plan-it Divers. Business went well in Jersey with regular trips to the Red Sea with groups of divers. However Jersey could not offer endless summers and all year round diving. So in February 1999 Rikky visited Tobago with a close friend Rae and his wife Angie, to look at setting up business in Tobago that would offer a range of water activities.
After numerous visits and negotiations with Tobago Plantations and later with Hilton Tobago, Rikky moved to Tobago in August 1999 to set up World of Watersports with his business partner Rae. July 2000 saw the soft opening of the Hilton Hotel along with the World of Watersports dive center. The Wind Surf center at Pigeon Point later opened in January 2001.
In February 2006 Rikky & Kim opened Radical Sports Limited to offer Parasailing, which proved very popular. Rikky and Kim went to Florida to become trained in parasail flying and conducted testing and training in Tobago before flying their first clients for Angostura Sail week 2006. With their Commercial Water Sports boat they started offering Wake Boarding, Water Skiing and Banana Boat Rides.
In December 2006 Rikky Knowles, and the Directors of World of Watersports, decided to sell off the scuba diving business at the Hilton Hotel. Due to the nature of the diving business Rikky previously spent much of his time at the Hilton dive shop and not at the Pigeon Point Center. After the sale of the diving side of the business he merged the Windsurf center with his Parasail Company, Radical Sports Tobago. There have been many changes and improvements to the center since the merger now that Rikky and Kim can focus on one center.
Kim was born in Trinidad, in 1999 she left Trinidad and moved to Montreal Canada to work. But anyone who knows Kim will know that she doesn’t like the cold, so she returned to T&T in 2000 and moved to Tobago. She first started working for the Mount Irvine Hotel as the senior accounts Assistant. However, having never worked in the Tourism/Hospitality industry, she requested permission from the Hotel’s management to engage in an intense training in all the departments of the hotel. After her regular working hours 8am – 4pm, she would then start work in another department until 11pm. This working experience would later help her to gain a position at the Coco Reef Resort & Spa as the Marketing/Administration Manager. She would later join the team at World of Watersports in 2004. Again faced with the task of working in an unfamiliar industry Kim began to learn to dive, windsurf and wake board. She has been managing the Wind Surf Center at Pigeon Point keeping it and the team running smoothly. During the season she can be seen on the beach teaching beginner lessons or on the water practicing her gybes. Kim is also trained to work on the Parasail Boat with Rikky. Due to demand during the 2007 summer Rikky & Kim took the Parasail boat to Trinidad at weekends to offer Parasailing.
Since 2002 we have been employing an international instructor who speaks German for the winter season including Club Mistral Center manager. This helps as we have a lot of German speaking clients visiting the center each year.
In addition we have some local guys working at the center, at present we have Dwight Hall who has been working with us since 2006, the only person we have ever seen trying to learn to jump a windsurfer before he could turn it, he is highly competitive when it comes to windsurfing.
Or you may meet John Mc Queen who has been with the team since May 2007. John can be seen helping with the Kite Surfing or assisting teaching Water Skiing or Wake Boarding, or crewing on the Parasail boat.
Also rejoining the team is Nigel Goodman, who’s originally from Trinidad but has resided in Tobago for several years. Nigel worked with World of Watersports at the windsurf centre from inception, however he migrated for a short period, but now that he is back in Tobago he’s back at the centre again. Nigel is an excellent kitesurf and windsurf instructor, his immeasurable experience in water sports instruction, and personal skill in boating and sea knowledge is definitely an asset to the team.
