IT is set to be a family affair with four members of the same family set to tackle the Southern 80 water-ski race this weekend.

Lachlan Cunningham will be in the driver’s seat of ‘Lab Rats’, the family ski boat, while Sophie will be the team’s observer, with Dylan and Zac on rails, as they contest the famous race for the second time.

It is the second season the family will take the boat up to the start line at Torrumbarry, and Lachlan is excited to share it with his family.

“This is my 26th year going up there, I am an ex-skier and observed in a boat from Melbourne for a few years then the boys decided they wanted to give it a go,” he said.

“The boys have never missed a ski race up there since they were born.

“It is something I have wanted to do, to get my kids involved and with school commitments, they focused on that and now they are off to uni, we decided this was the right time.

“It is regarded as the biggest ski-race in the world, and there is close to 400 entries this year and there is no other team that I know of that has four members from the same family.

“We do a lot of training, we have just come back from a coupe of weeks up in Mildura and skied twice a day, so they’ve done the hard yards to prepare.

“We do the Echuca (Southern 80), Robinvale and Mildura and we also do the Hawkesbury 120.”

The team will compete in the 60mph social and 70 mph expert classes, with the aim to get up to the speed as quickly as possible, then maintain it for as long as you can.

The social race is today with the brothers set to use normal length skis, before swapping them for rails for the 70mph race tomorrow.

“That (expert) race is a very physical race on both skiers and drivers,” Cunningham said.

“It has 124 bends, and is left-right-left-right all the way.

“You have your racing line, and it has recently flooded, so you don’t always know what is under the murky water, and being a windy river and sharp corners, you do have to sometimes hug a bank on one corner, depending what corner follows.”

Adding to the appeal is the fact two youngsters will also be able to get behind the boat on Sunday, with six-year-old Hudson Caruana and three-year-old Ryder Caruana set to tackle the Murray River for the first time.

“With COVID, it has been hard to get the sport back up and going, and they are trying to get the young ones back involved,” Cunningham said.

“This year they have incorporated into the end of Sunday that 21 boats will have kids all under 10, and so he has an EZ ski, which is a floating type ski and they will ski the last couple of kms over the finish line and they will get the roar of the crowd as well, so that is a bit of extra excitement.

“I had a boat when I first started skiing with Dale Hutchins, and he has passed, but now I am going to be towing his grandson.”