Faster Than the Wind Story of an East County Speed Ski Champion May 2006

by Janine Doherty
Photos by Russell Byrne & Richard Wisdom

I’m currently the number one high speed F2 (Formula 2) water ski racing woman in the United States and number two in the world. My fastest speed on a water ski is 102 MPH, which is the U.S. women’s record for my division.

The World Water Ski Racing Championship is an every-two-year event. Only two women from each country in my class are invited to attend. In 2003 I became the number one F2 female water skier in the world. I won all four races and got the overall gold medal at the event that was conducted that year in Long Beach. When I won the world title I shouted, “This is the best day of my whole life!”

In 2005 I lost the title to a 17 year old girl, Lauryn Eagle, in a race in the North Sea that was unbelievably grueling. The conditions were so terrible that one of the tow boats actually sank and was lost. Over the course of four races I fell a total of 11 times. In one of those falls I injured myself but continued racing through the pain of what was later diagnosed as a broken tailbone. Those were endurance races through the roughest water I ever saw. I took the Silver medal.

First Chapters of my Waterborne Story
I started water skiing when I was eight years old. I received a set of water skis for my birthday and broke them in by putting them on in the family swimming pool. Someone then pulled me through the water by running like a racehorse around the pool while I hung on to the end of the rope he was holding over his shoulder.

My parents had a boat that a few days later towed me much more effectively than was possible by some galloping person. My mom was actually a competition water skier who gave me my first lessons. She was a good teacher, I guess, because the first time I actually used my new skis I took off from a sitting position on a dock – and never wiped out. 

My first great passion in water sports was for barefoot water skiing. I planned to compete, but that never happened because I became caught up in the world of competition speed skiing.

Things in my life are sometimes difficult and messy but I come alive when my driver shoves the throttles forward and the power from the huge twin turbo race boat begins to come surging down the line. Suddenly I’m skimming over the top of the water and the cares and demands of life fade away. I feel like I€m all alone with God. I get a big rush from something that’s beyond adrenaline. I feel a great sense of freedom. The bonds holding me to the earth fall away and I feel like I’m flying.

At that moment I’m passing through the air at the speed of a hurricane, and my body is forced to react beyond the abilities of conscious, rational thought. Since my body is responding at the level of instincts, skiing at this speed becomes, in a sense, effortless. I’m separated from the nearest human being by a distance that’s almost a football field in length, and doing what I love to do. I don’t have to think about anything. I can watch the water flying by beneath my feet, I can see the levees flashing by in a blur of motion. I’m in my zone. I feel great!

Part of the experience, I think, is the deliberate putting of my trust, perhaps even my life, into the hands of my driver, navigator, observer, and the equipment that I depend upon to preserve me from injury and possibly death. I’m being pulled at the end of a rope that’s 230 feet long and only four millimeters in diameter – about the size of a pencil, or my pinky finger. Everything has to work together to make my adventure possible. I’m depending upon my equipment and instruments, my driver, my ability, and the state of the water that I’m skiing through. I feel caught up in the web of the forces holding these variables together to produce a really great run.

My speed is beyond the ability of even animals to process. The other day a duck actually flew between me and my boat, striking my tow rope. The boat passed in front of the duck and the poor bird struck the line before he could react to the fact that anything was going on. A friend of mine was killed when a duck smashed into his chest while he was going 109 MPH.

Happy Chapters in a Story with a Chaotic Beginning
I have always found the world of water skiing to be fascinating because of the tremendous contrast the orderly and disciplined sport provides to my chaotic life. I’m 32 years old and have lived in 32 different homes and residences. I’ve endured a lot of turmoil in my life. As a young person I survived abusive relationships with a number of family members.

I had issues with personal boundaries that made me vulnerable to predatory individuals who were on the prowl for people like me who hadn’t learned to protect themselves. I lived an anxious life and would latch onto anyone who even pretended to be nice to me.

Those dysfunctional relationships were not always of a sexual nature, but they were manipulative and harmful. The thing I remember most about events from the past are the feelings that I had. I would have episodes in which I would become so panicky that I would begin hyper-ventilating.

I learned how to disassociate myself from reality and go somewhere else in my mind. Those retreats provided a good defense mechanism, but now such behavior is a problem for me.

I have been diagnosed as having ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and hyper energy, which means that some parts of my life require deliberate effort to manage and control. My social life has continued to be somewhat chaotic.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes but, they say, experience is a great teacher for people who are willing to learn and I feel that I’m finally coming to some wisdom.

For a long time I was envious of all the people around me who seemed to be happy and contented. I began praying that I would some day enjoy the good feelings that they were having. God answers prayer and has filled my mind with great joy that I feel is counterbalancing the awful feelings I had as a child.

Of course, I’ve had to play my appropriate role before that could happen. I could choose to be a failure – God knows there has been a lot of incentive there for me to make that choice – but I don’t. Failure would be the easy way in life; I’m not into doing things that are easy.

Another thing I prayed for was to be able to begin a business of my own. I had developed a real aversion to working for other people. My personal history has made me hyper-sensitive about who is around me, and what kinds of vibes they have. I monitor very carefully who can touch me and the circumstances under which they can do so. When I work at a 9 to 5 job I don’t have a choice about who surrounds me. There are a lot of dysfunctional individuals out there whose very presence really brings down the people around them.

God very directly led me to start a house painting business that I named Heavenly Painting in acknowledgment of the fact that it was a gift from Him to me. I wanted to remind myself every day that I only have my business because He gave it to me.

I paint people’s houses as though I were painting God’s house. I’m expensive but more than one customer has told me that the results are so good that the cost actually becomes inexpensive. If Heavenly Painting paints your house you can feel proud of the results. I once got a 700 dollar tip from a customer who said that he couldn’t believe how good a job we had done. I don’t do any advertising, and I am particular about who I work for. Just as with people who work with me, I stay away from mean people as clients – and have developed a great ability to recognize these people as soon I meet one of them.

I’m still not a saint. I’m on a road to recovery, however. I have ups and downs. Some days I’m really selfish, but then I go back to God and get things right. I’ve learned the greatest lesson that I can’t do this on my own – and the other part of that lesson – that God and I together can do anything.

Life is a challenge, but I love challenges. My attitude is “Bring it on! Just watch me!”

When I’m at my best I’m not really ADD, I’m simply full of energy. People around me at work and in my water skiing need me to have that energy. I get up and fly in a lot of places in my life – and people are encouraged to fly along with me.

The Thrills and Pains of Championship Competition
I entered my first competition when I was 22 years old. My mom was competing in the same event and wanted me to watch her. It wasn’t a great experience for me. I was so afraid for both my mom and for myself that I was actually sick to my stomach. Mom took third place and I took an unsurprising last place. But I decided, in retrospect, that the thrill of competing had been sufficiently great to negate all the anxieties that accompanied it.

High speed water ski racing is dangerous, just like car racing. I crashed at 85 MPH a year ago last March and still carry the scars on my wrist and face. It was a World Team Selection race and I was able to continue the season only by getting a shot of Cortisone. I had won the race the day before and was winning when I fell.

When you fall at that speed, there isn’t much difference between water and cement. It is difficult to watch videos of a water skier falling at those speeds. We go bouncing off the water just as though it were a solid surface. We continue crashing and rebounding until finally our speed slows down sufficiently that our battered and torn bodies can at last sink into the waves. After my fall they got me all bandaged up and I asked them, “Can I cry now?”

Everything seems to go into super slow motion when I’m in the middle of one of these high-speed wipe-outs. I remember one time falling, and as I was being slammed towards the water I saw that my ski was tearing off and had time to feel a sense of relief in realizing that the ski was only going to break my ankle and not my knee that I had just had surgery on from a previous accident.

I’m always flirting with disaster. The right rear corner of my favorite ski, for example, currently has a piece missing from its back edge because a boat’s propeller sucked my ski into its blades and snapped the chunk out like it was a piece of a pretzel. Of course, a few feet closer and it would have done the same thing to both my legs.

In 1998 and 2001, I was named our region’s Most Outstanding Skier. I still hold three records in the Mike Berry San Francisco Bay Race and placed five times in the 62-mile marathon Catalina ski competitions, including a 1999 Senior Women’s Championship title.

Last October I was in the Bay Race – from Benicia to Alcatraz and back. The boat was a big offshore watercraft that went 81 miles per hour. The water was decent but two miles from the finish line two tugs went by and the driver almost flipped. I had to let go of my handles and sink into the water. The driver came back around, picked me up, got me back up onto my skis again – and after all that we still broke the track record by two minutes and eighteen seconds. I hold the women’s open record for that race.

Enough of the Right Stuff
I attained my championship status as a result of a lot of guts and hard work. I possess no native abilities that ever helped to make this easy. In 2003 I received an honor as the NWSRA (National  Water Ski Racing Association) Female Athlete of the Year. When presenting the award, the officials commended me on my energy and enthusiasm. There was no mention of anything like talents or abilities. And appropriately so! Scott Pellaton, who currently holds the world’s barefoot water ski record once told me that I was the clumsiest and least talented water ski champion he had ever met.

The kind of courage I have doesn’t mean that I’m never fearful – it simply means that I ski through my fears. In fact, speed skiing events are always huge emotional roller coasters. I go to these things and I’m cool, but ten minutes before the starting gun I’m bawling like a baby and thinking horrible thoughts like, “What’s going to happen out there?” I have terrible visions of my mangled body bouncing across the waves like a doll with its stuffing coming out. But then I jump in that freezing water, grab hold of the rope, and might ski the best race of my life. As soon as I get up on that ski, everything becomes all right.

In one competition I was running second in a race that had been going on for about 35 minutes when I lost my concentration and fell head forward into the water, which immediately forced my upper body backward in a painful curl over my lower body and I ended up painfully hyper-extending my lower spine. It wasn’t as bad as I feared, because I thought that I was going to break in half.

Many of my friends think I’m a glutton for punishment, and maybe I am because my favorite races are marathons when 40 of us skiers compete over courses that cover 60 miles and can last as long as an hour. At the height of the season I often compete in two of these events in a single weekend. In five weekends I will sometimes participate in 10 separate marathon races. The demands of the sport force me to maintain my body in excellent physical shape. That kind of physical abuse would tear me apart if I weren’t in top physical condition.

The all time women’s record is 111 MPH, which a Discovery Bay resident, by the name of Donna Price, set in the 1980s. I’m aiming to break her record this summer. Donna is a grand lady who sends me cards and flowers all the time to acknowledge my achievements. Donna might have broken her own record, but she fell and injured her arm beyond repair. She’s a public schoolteacher and a grand human being. When I break her record, Donna is going to be delighted and will rejoice with me.

I love going fast! The experience of being on that ski with the water racing as hard and as unforgiving as glass beneath me, and the wind blowing like a gale around my body seems to elevate me into some special alternate reality. Indescribable!

Janine’s sponsors include West Marine, Red Line Oil, Adam’s Tile and Plaster, Golden Bay Glass, Discovery Motor Sports. Seaton Marine, Prime Marine, and Christine Bybee.