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WATERSKI MagazineOn the first day of the 1996 Barefoot Worlds, a 14-year-old girl from half a world south of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, swept in front of the crowd gathered on the shore. There was little reaction. To all but a few insiders, she entered and left the wake slalom course a virtual unknown.
But Nadine de Villiers didn't exit the tournament quietly. Two days later she left the world stage with two bronze medals, two silvers and European barefoot records in wake slalom, tricks and jump. After her last jump of the weekend, the crowd gave her a standing ovation.
“I had never heard of her until this week,” said Australian Sharon Stekelenberg, still soaking with surprise. “She came out of nowhere.”
Until about three years ago South Africa (which participates in the European Region) might as well have been nowhere. Especially to an international athlete. Which is why Andre de Villiers will never forget that day in December 1993, when his little girl said the words he privately dreaded: “Dad, will you teach me to ski like you used to?”
He wasn't really hoping to see his barefooting career repeated through his flesh and blood. It wasn't the danger that concerned Andre. It was his past, one that saw him qualify for the national team from 1979-1987 only to be trapped inside his country because his passport said “South Africa.”
“He didn't want to get involved again,” says Nadine, her braces shining. “But I insisted that he let me try.”
Nadine, who was 11 at the time and already holding her own in rugby matches with the boys, was a dream student. Within hours she was footing on the short rope and after three weeks she was holding up for a full minute at 75 feet back.
“I have an eye for talent and knew we had something special,” says Andre. But what if Nadine faced the same foreboding wall that stopped her father in his tracks for nine straight years? The wall that said apartheid.
“We weren't welcome anywhere,” remembers Andre. “We watched our national rugby team play on TV and saw the demonstrations. Her mother [Ina] and I didn't want her to go through that.”
The barriers – and apartheid – came down in April of 1994 when South Africa became a democratic state. The de Villiers were suddenly world citizens. And two years later Nadine, who has never lost a tournament in her home country, was becoming a world beater.
“In 1998 she'll be the next world champion,” says Jennifer Calleri, the defending overall champion who retired after the '96 Worlds. Stekelenburg might have something to say about that, but even she admits that de Villiers will “be the first to go inverted [in jump] and she'll be my top competition in Sydney.”
To de Villiers and her parents, however, the most important contest is over.
“You don't totally forget the past,” says Andre. “We're realizing for the first time what it's like to be welcome to compete in another country. It was a long time coming, but to see Nadine do so well is a damn good replacement for the feeling I would have had.”
