Britta Llewellyn, Water Ski

Britta Llewellyn, and Austria native, moved to the United States after high school with $100 in her pocket to train for a sport she barely knew how to do. Within five years she was one of the top five water ski jumpers in the world, followed 10 European titles in a row and two world championships. Having been sponsored by Red Bull, she transitioned into managing their athlete performance department with a goal of helping other athletes become the best they can be.

​Name: Britta Llewellyn
Hometown: Gmunden, Austria
Sport: Water Skiing
Career Duration: 22 years (1985-2007)
Level: World Champion
Retirement: 2007
Current Occupation: Athlete Performance Manager for Red Bull
Location: West Palm Beach, Florida
Interests: Everything to do with sports, coffee dates and being with friends

​Where are you from?
I was born in Austria, and was the fifth of five children. We were all very close in age (within 6 years). I often think that is what made me who I am as a person and athlete. I always had to work for what I wanted. My family didn’t have a lot of money, so food – and everything else – was scarce, so being the youngest I had to fight for food off the table.  When I was 12, my parents divorced. My father lived in the same town, but my mother remarried and moved to Germany. So the five of us kids lived in our childhood home on our own. I was 14 – my oldest sister was 20 and was already in her first job as an accountant, and my oldest brother was in college to become a pharmacist. The rest of us were in high school together. We watched out for each other, and I was so into sports that there was never any concern that I would stray off path.
 
When did you start sports?
I was two years old when my mom took me to a “mommy and me” gymnastics class. I was always glued to the television when the Olympics or any sport was on, especially the gymnast Nadia Comaneci. At four, I told my mom I would be a world champion one day. She had written that down in a book, and when I won my first world championship in 1998, she gave it to me as a gift. That was special.
 
How did you find your way from gymnastics to water skiing?
At 14 I won the junior nationals for gymnastics, but realized it wasn’t my sport. I don’t know if it was because I knew I couldn’t be the best, or I just didn’t like it anymore. I switched to rowing (I lived on a big lake). I did that for three years and loved it, but again, after winning nationals at 17, I didn’t see myself doing it forever. It just wasn’t exciting enough for me. But when I would be rowing I would see the skiing around me, and it always looked interesting. I told my dad I wanted to try, so we went over there – and because of my background in gymnastics and rowing, I had enough strength that I got up the first time. I knew right away that’s what I wanted to do. The people in the club looked after me right away once they saw my potential. I am thankful for those people, because they made it possible for me to keep going back. I couldn’t have paid for the sessions. 

Where did you get the training to become a world champion?
After graduating high school, I wrote to a couple ski schools to see if I could get a job. Swiss Ski School wrote back they needed a cook, so I packed up with $100 in my pocket and moved to Clermont, Florida alone. I didn’t get paid, but I had everything I needed to train. They had a lot of good coaches from Europe because they needed somewhere to train in the winter. They took me under their wing. I was a total beginner. I couldn’t even be considered a skier at the time because I didn’t even know how. I just knew I loved it and wanted to do it for a living. For them to see potential in me and to teach me to become a skier in a short amount of time was amazing. They got their money’s worth with me!
 
That’s a lot to sacrifice for your dream. Was it difficult?
The first five years were hard. I didn’t have the money to get home. Although I was happy to be at the school, I felt stuck. But I never forgot why I did it – I wanted to be a world champion, and that got me through it. Then in 1990 I started winning my first European championship titles, and sponsorships started coming in. I was in the top five in the world and in the following years, would win money, and travel the world competing. I felt liberated, was on my own two feet, and I could come and go when I wanted.
 
Who were your sponsors?
Austrian Sports Aid (government), a car company from Austria, a coffee company from Austria, and an insurance company. The good thing about Austria is it’s a small country, and so people saw my success. The more years I had, the more I was recognized. Red Bull became a sponsor in 1992.
 
Can you tell me a little more about your career?
I got to travel all over the world: Italy, Spain, France, England Russia, Asia, United Arab Emirates… I was far ahead in Europe for ski jump, and won 10 European Championships in a row. But it was different on the world stage – there were five of us girls that could win on any given day. I held two world records at 172 feet and 175 feet in 2000 for about two hours until my best friend broke them right after me. That happened a couple times, but I was OK with that.

How did your retirement come about?
I always knew that if I couldn’t be the best in the world, I wouldn’t do it. If I had a bad day, that’s one thing. But going into a competition knowing I couldn’t be the best… I just wouldn’t do it. So in 2003 when I broke vertebrae in my lower back, it was career-ending because I couldn’t train enough to compete with the other girls. I knew I couldn’t push hard enough anymore so I stopped immediately.
 
How did you injure your back? Were you ready for retirement?
I crashed. I didn’t have surgery, I just had to take it easy and be careful. It healed on its own, but I just couldn’t ski anymore. That happened when my son Dorien was six years old and I was 36 years old, so I was kind of ready for it. I was also still involved in the sport. At that time, my husband was number one in the world. I lived it through him, which was just as exciting to me as skiing myself.
 
Did you meet your husband while competing?
Yes. In 1992 I moved to Palm Beach to train, and our trainers knew each other. So we saw each other at the lake, went to lunch all together, went to see movies, etc. We were married 1996. Funny story: I was pregnant with my son and my husband took a video of me where he asked when the baby is due. I said May 16, and then he mentioned, “ but I thought he is due May 29.” That was true, but the U.S. Masters was the biggest event of the year back then, and the tournament was the weekend after May 16. For my husband to have a clear head and not worry about the birth, the baby would need to be born earlier. And sure enough, he was born May 16.
 
What did you do after retirement?
I was coaching at the time and hanging out with Dorien. Then the 2005 World Championships came around, and my husband was going. It was in China, and since Austria didn’t have a strong team that year, I decided to ski for them so I would get my trip paid for. (Jump was my best event, but I couldn’t do that any more. So I did the other two events – tricks and slalom). I trained a little and felt my back. I didn’t jump, I just did slalom and still got fifth place.
 
In 2007, I had to tell Red Bull I was officially retiring. It happened to be the first year my son competed in the European Championships. When I was having dinner with the owner of Red Bull to tell him the news, my son was with me. The owner said, “one Llewellyn out and the other in,” and then switched from sponsoring me to my son.

​So your son is taking after the family business?
He originally was much more into hockey, his dad being from Canada. Then when he was nine, we were in Austria and my nephew Sebastian was going to compete in a kids’ ski tournament. My sister asked if Dorien would come and compete. He decided to go for fun, but after Sebastian beat him, all he did was get on his skis and train and train because he would not be beat by his cousin. He grew up in a fairly competitive household, saw what we did, and tried to match that. As much as we tried to show him not everything in life is a competition, it didn’t work. When Dad came in second, Dorian would cry, even though I would tell him second was still good! But he would see our initial reaction when you don’t win first, and he knew. He’s a perfectionist.
 
Dorien still kept up hockey, went to a hockey boarding school in Boston (14-18), and tried to ski as much as he could. He got a few scholarship offers for hockey, but he is very driven academically so he ended up choosing Rollins, even though he didn’t get an offer for hockey there. Luckily since Rollins is here in Florida, he could still ski. Now he is ranked third in the world in the open division. I could not be more proud of him.
 
Now you are working at Red Bull. Did you start that after retirement?
When I was talking with the owner, he asked what I wanted to do post retirement. I said I wanted to work with athletes, since that is what I did best. I’ve done it, I’ve been in their shoes. At the time, Red Bull was putting together an Athlete Performance department, so he put me in charge of that. Now our team has grown to 18 people. I will say my first year wasn’t that easy. I had to prove that I’m good at what I do, because people thought I was just hired because I know the owner. But now we have an amazing team of people, and it’s beneficial for the athletes to work with us because of this fact as well. A lot of athletes will hold out until they have the Red Bull sponsorship because they want what we offer. We do 10-12 training camps per year. We have fun and teach at the same time.
 
What do you do at these camps and trainings?
Our mission is to figure out how we can make athletes the best they can be. We have some of the best athletes in the world, and they already have their coaches, nutritionists, etc. We are there to figure out what else we can do for them. We’ve done a lot of cool things. For example, we have worked closely with Cirque de Soleil. Most of the athletes we sponsor are individual, so they are strong-minded and not as team oriented. We took a group of individual athletes to work with Cirque, and in 6 days, we saw the most amazing transformation in a group of people. The athletes went from thinking this was a stupid exercise and wanting to go home, to a week later doing amazing things together. We try to come up with how to help these athletes without them even knowing we are tapping into their mentality.
 
What type of help do you focus on the most with these athletes?
Mental coaching is the most underrated tool, and we do a lot of that with our athletes. If I had a mental coach, I would have won three more world championships. During my first championships, I was the top seed in the first round, and then got sick. I still skied and managed to get third. At the next championships two years later, the same thing happened, and I came in second. I thought this was a coincidence. Then in France two years later, I said to my federation and team that I need to bring a doctor with me, because what if it happens again? Sure enough, it did. I just put so much pressure on myself since it’s the only thing I hadn’t won. A mental coach could have helped me through this. We also want to focus on the transition out of sport, which is why I think what Athletes Soul is doing is so important. 

Do you see a lot of athletes struggling with this transition?
Yes, and I see my husband going through it now. He just officially retired at 42. He was number one in the world for 16 years, and always said he wanted to go out as number one. But then five years ago he blew out his knee a week before the world championships. He still competed but came in second. He felt it wasn’t good enough, so tried to compete at the next worlds two years later and blew his knee out again. Another ACL, hip, and shattered femur, and finally he is ready to admit his body is telling him to quit. It makes me want to cry sometimes because it’s so hard for him. I had an easier time because I was ready, I had my son, I was still involved in the skiing world with my husband, my final competition was celebrated, and I transitioned directly into working with athletes at Red Bull.
 
What was your final world championship like, knowing it was your last?
My first world championship was in Austria in 1991, and my last was in Austria in 2007, which was cool. The media made a huge deal out of it, did a 20-minute profile on me, I got to carry the Austrian flag, and did a small jump as my “official last jump,” so I had a great ending to my career. That made a huge difference for me, and so much easier to let go. Not a lot of people have that. Watching my husband struggle with this ending to his career is what made me bring up the issue of transition to Red Bull. It’s something that needs to be addressed.
 
What do you think would help athletes prepare for the transition out of sports?
There needs to be a plan. You do your same routine for so long: get up in the morning, go for a run, eat, ski, eat, stretch, sleep. When it is all over, you get up and there is nothing for you to do. We have to have a plan for that. When you get up in the morning that first day after your career without a plan, there is massive black hole because you don’t know what to do with yourself.
 
Have you skied since your retirement?
Well, in 2009 my husband and son qualified for the world championships in Calgary. A mother, father, and son had never all competed at the same world championships, so I came out of retirement for that (not as much to compete, but just to do it as a family). I did train for it, and felt it in my back, and then hurt it a little more at worlds. I didn’t tell anyone that I was hurt because I felt stupid for competing after my back injury. Then, I was going to meet my boss at Red Bull in Europe, stepped out of the shower, and it felt like someone shot me in the back. I went to the meeting anyway in excruciating pain, and then I could barely drive home. Within six hours I was paralyzed from the waist down and had to have emergency surgery to fix two ruptured discs. That was very frightening, because though they said my feeling would come back, you never know.
 
Have you suffered any other injuries?
My neck and elbows are messed up from 20 years of ski jumping. I’ve had two discs replaced in my neck and two in my low back. I have an amazing doctor here. My last surgery a year-and-a-half ago with him gave me life. I can do everything again. I’ve been snow and water skiing since.
 
What have you learned during your athletic career?
So many things. I have learned to be very organized. I know what to do when in the time I have (I learned this at ski school when I was cooking for 52 people and had to know what to do and when to get everyone fed at the right time). I’m tough on the athletes I work with on this. From getting to know so many people from so many countries, I also learned not to judge people and know that everyone has their own story. I try to live by the saying, “if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything.”
 
How do you define success? Do you consider yourself successful?
Success is mastering what you set out to do. I do consider myself successful because I had a vision, I went after it, and I completed it. I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and I got it done. But at the same time, I feel like you are never done. There is always something more to work on – you can always be better than what you are today. And that’s what I’m doing, trying to be better today than I was yesterday, for my family and the athletes I work with.
 
Do you still stay in touch with your coaches and/or teammates?
We make a point when we are at the Australia tournament to see the girls I used to compete against. We still stay in touch like one big family. And now my son sometimes goes and skis with my former coach.
 
I learned after some difficult losses that time with friends and family is so important. I used to go home every six months, but now I go home every three months because I want that time with everyone. My friends will laugh at me because I will go to a café and sit there for six hours and not move, but my friends will cycle in and out hourly. I don’t ever want to feel like I didn’t see someone enough, or I didn’t have enough time with them. It is important to my family and me. Time is the most valuable thing you have in life, so you better live every day to the fullest. I want to go to bed and say I have made the best of every day, and I truly believe that I do.