French beauty Brigitte Lethem is St. Martin’s water-skiing professeur extraordinaire
BRIGITTE LETHEM STANDS five feet three inches on bare feet, which is how she likes to water-ski. “It hurts when you fall, skiing barefoot,” Lethem says with an anesthetizing, if sometimes inscrutable French accent that begins to explain why grown men allow her to drag them at up to 36 miles per hour through the warm waters around St. Martin, in the Caribbean. “But falling always hurts.”Especially when you’re falling for one of the best freestyle skiers in the world. Take it from her husband, former pro Laurent Guy, who, along with Lethem, runs Ski Nautique Club Caraibes ski school. “She’s better than me,” says Guy. “Her toe tricks are too hard for me. I fall.”
But enough about Mister Nice Guy. Lethem, 34, is the real reason you should care about non-snow skiing, a sport that boasts a surprising 11 million bronzed acolytes in the U.S. That following, plus record attendance at this year’s national championships, suggests that water-skiing might finally be shifting its focus from the yellow wetsuit and dripping mustache of Banana George to the trim bikinis and French accents of Lethem, fellow skier Geraldine Jamin, and freestyle-skiing world champ Clementine Lucine. Though presently recovering from surgery on her left shoulder, Lethem is expected to finish the season among the top ten female freestyle skiers in the world.
If Brigitte calls to mind a certain gap-toothed actress from Paris who popularized this young skier’s uniform in the 1950s, resist the temptation to compare her with Bardot. Lethem’s new wave is entirely her own. Watching her on a single ski, tow rope held by viselike toes, in an outfit as suitable for the French Riviera as the competitive waters of Callaway Gardens (where she won the U.S. Masters freestyle-
skiing crown en route to a number-one world ranking in July 2004), one grasps her singular sexiness, if not the strength of her toes.
Lethem has always taken her leisure pursuits seriously. Back in her hometown of Lyons, France, she grew up ice-skating, Rollerblading, and snowboarding better than most of her boyfriends. She has also proved that her first passion isn’t just for the lounging-by-the-lake set. Lethem has skied in frigid waters during snowstorms (wearing a wetsuit, of course), behind a jet ski over seven-foot ocean swells, and in gator-inhabited Florida lakes. “I took some guys wakeboarding on a lake with an alligator—which never hurt anyone—and they quit after their very first set! They were too scared to get in the water again.” Tough as she is, Lethem has a few irrational fears of her own: To this day, she carefully inspects her bindings every time she puts them on because many years ago, in Florida, she once found a garden snake hiding in one. “I was screaming everywhere,” she says. “Now I always double-check before stepping into them.” And one more thing: “I don’t ski with sharks.”
The greatest peril posed by St. Martin’s swath of Caribbean Sea, which remains a tepid 82 degrees year-round, may simply be the desire never to leave it. In 2003, Lethem relocated here from Clermont, Florida, where she had trained at the acclaimed Swiss Ski School. Her new home, a 37-square-mile speck of Caribbean sand a hundred miles east of St. John, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, is divided into two autonomous nations: French St. Martin to the north and Dutch St. Maarten to the south. Conventional wisdom holds that the French side is relaxed and sophisticated, with yachts and open-air markets, while the Dutch side is livelier, with casinos and a rowdier nightlife.To be sure, first-class resorts and white-sand beaches abound in both. The real draw for visitors, however, is skiing warm waters year-round and learning to do so from water-skiing’s version of Olympian Dara Torres. “I can teach 720-degree rotations, toe tricks, flips—whatever you want,” Lethem says. “Or I can help you to just stand up and hold on to the rope.” For beginners, getting up on your feet while Lethem jams down the throttle is the hardest part. “That could take all morning,” she admits, with a slightly sadistic laugh.
Lethem is the teacher you wish you’d had in gym class: soft-spoken, easy to look at, and better at her sport than you’ll ever be. Her classroom is an arm of the Simpson Bay saltwater lagoon on the southwest end of the island, one of the largest landlocked bodies of water in the Caribbean. Because water-skiing’s pro events are poorly compensated (Lethem’s top finish—at the 2004 Masters—netted her just $7,000), Lethem manages a full teaching schedule with some two dozen students a week. A few have notably continued their studies, including a teenager who won the European Under-14 World Championships just this year. Most of her clients, however, are middle-aged adults less interested in competing than learning a new warm-weather skill that provides a full-body workout. “Skiing is especially good for your core and legs, which you use to balance over the wake,” Lethem says. “And your tan, too.”
How long will Lethem continue to skim the smooth, salty waters of St. Martin with the tow rope held between her toes as countless imitators and admirers follow, some more gracefully than others, in her wake? “My mom still skis every day she can, and she’s 70,” says Lethem. “This is a very good sport to keep in good shape. You can do it almost forever.”
Just like chasing beautiful French women.
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