Board Brilliance : Sports: Ventura youth, 14, uncoils his best effort to win world snakeboarding championship in England.

After just 1 1/2 years of trying his hand at a new sport called snakeboarding, 14-year-old Jay Beatty of Ventura has won the world championship in England and become a star of the fledgling sport.

Jay was flown to London by Snakeboard USA, the country’s only snakeboard manufacturer, and beat out 34 competitors last weekend to win the 1994 World Snakeboarding Championships.

The sport, which is big in Europe and was invented eight years ago, tests snakers’ skill and balance on a skateboard-like apparatus featuring two connected, pivoting boards that riders strap to their feet.

While competing in England, Jay carved, slid, spun and jumped against more experienced snakeboarders. It was Jay’s first competition ever.

To the shock and chagrin of his rivals--some six years older than he is with years more experience--Jay knocked off the field “in a landslide.” All of the other contestants had to qualify through competitions in their countries. Jay was the only wild-card entry.

“I was really surprised,” said Jay on Friday, standing on his black snakeboard which sports a surfing-style sticker that says Mad . “I didn’t really believe it myself until they announced it.”

The Buena High School freshman won a $1,000 check and two $500 watches from European and American sponsors. An announcement of his victory was broadcast on British television.

During the competition, Jay landed the only 720-degree spinning jump of the day. He also said he spun 900 degrees in a practice jump --but failed to “stick the landing.” Jay said he has never seen anyone else spin 2 1/2 times around, even during unsuccessful jumps.

Similar to a figure-skating contest, snakeboarding is judged on style, expression, height and difficulty of jumps, said Jay’s unofficial coach and mentor, Brandon Eifrid, 22, who works for Brand X, Snakeboard USA’s California distributor.

Jay attributes his rise in the sport to a good-old fashioned work ethic.

“Practice,” he said. “I just really like doing it, I do it every day.” During the summer months, Jay snakeboards around Ventura as much as eight hours a day.

“Anybody can get a skateboard and ride it,” Jay said, between 10-foot-high launches off a neighborhood ramp. “This is way more fun. . .

Riders can make tightly wound, side-winding turns at high speeds on the apparatus by twisting their upper bodies, like surfers do, Eifrid said. The boards are easily manipulated with a foot-long, pliable fiber strap that connects the two foot plates. While skateboarders often lose control of their boards at about 10 m.p.h., snakeboarders can reach speeds of 18 to 20 m.p.h., Eifrid said.

In England, Jay said, some of his competitors were clocked at 50 m.p.h. speeding down a steep hill.

“It’s basically a lot of big air, more speed,” Eifrid said. “It’s a whole different rush. . . . There’s not any obstacles too big--handrails, flights of stairs, hills. It’s like snowboarding (around) Ventura.”

Along with seven teen-age teammates, Jay is carted off many weekends to statewide exhibitions and halftime shows to promote the sport.

Among Jay’s competitors at the world competition was the reigning champ, Ashley Morgan of South Africa, who Eifrid said is about 20 years old and has been practicing his swirling high-wire act for about seven years. Morgan was a friend of a young South African surfer named James Fischer, who was bored with conventional skateboarding, and developed snakeboarding.

“Jay is pretty much a natural as far as an athlete goes,” said Jay’s mother, Renee Beatty. “As long as he likes it, he gets really obsessed, he’s a perfectionist.”

If it weren’t for Renee Beatty, Jay may have never seen a snakeboard. Two years ago, Jay’s younger brother, Brian, asked their mother to buy him a skateboard for Christmas. But while shopping for a skateboard, she met Eifrid promoting his product at a Camarillo bizarre and bought the snakeboard instead.

“It looked like it was going to be the wave of the future, so I took a chance on it,” Renee Beatty said. “Jay just lives to go and do this now. . . . Those other kids (in Europe) had never even heard of Jay, and then he blew everybody away.”