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WATERSKI MagazineDeena Mapple is talking on the phone. A few feet away 1-year-old Elyssa Mapple alternately bangs cookware on the kitchen floor and pokes at the phone pad. To the caller, it sounds as if Mom is standing center stage at Lollapalooza concert. But she isn't fazed. For 30 minutes, in fact, Mom talks without a single hitch in her voice. Elyssa raps on.
It isn't surprising, really, that Mapple still fends off distraction with the ease of Teflon. While she dominated women's skiing through the 1980s and early 1990s, she personified the word “focus.” It's a word any skier unfortunate enough to challenge Mapple will still use to describe her. She could sit right there with her rivals the day of an event, hear them carrying on with one another and think of nothing more than her next jump or slalom pass.
“It was almost impossible to shake her,” says Mapple's longtime rival Camille Duvall-Hero, herself a world slalom champion in 1985. “She could be at the World Championships with rough water, bad judging, running late – and she'd remain unflappable. It was laser-like focus.”
Mapple's mere presence on the dock could send chills through some of the girls down on the dock. Few athletes have made their determination so visual.
“And her physical strength was really amazing, intimidating to some of the girls,” says Duvall. The dock, in other words, was no place to strike up a conversation, not when Mapple's pulse was the only evidence of her mortality. Except for husband Andy, nobody knew what the six-time world champion was thinking.
“There was always doubt,” Mapple says. “Maybe that was to my advantage, knowing someone could always be there to blow me out of the water. But I didn't want any of my competitors knowing that was on my mind.”
Though she wouldn't say it then and she won't say it now, Mapple was as close to invincible as any water skier ever. She won an unthinkable 37 straight jump events between 1987-90 and amassed 68 pro wins before the bean counter broke. There were 20 U.S. Masters championships and 26 national titles and ownership of both the world slalom and jump marks at the same time. And there was doubt every time out.
“You have to get past that,” she says. “Maybe having tunnel vision helped.”
It not only helped her build Hall of Fame credentials, but it also led to the comfortable life she has now with Andy, the defending world slalom champion, and their two kids, Elyssa and 6-year-old Michael, in posh Windermere, Florida.
“I'm so grateful for everything I have. The Lord has been there with me all along. He gave me the talent and that's why I have a house, a family and am able to travel the world.”
The pot-banging in the background stops. Deena Mapple pauses. It's time to go.
- Robert Stephens
