Son sets his sights on dad’s record at water-skiing event
Dorien Llewellyn grew up in the shadow of the most decorated water skier in history.
Yet the son of Jaret Llewellyn, who originally hails from Innisfail, is carving out his own path and making a name for himself both in competitive circles and on the social media scene.
This weekend, Dorien, 22, will compete in the Canadian Open Water Ski Championships at Shalom Park in Edmonton, looking to break a national tricks record held by his father.
“In a way, it was always expected that I would be on the waterskiing scene,” Llewellyn said. “I would go to tournaments where my dad would go compete on the pro tour. But my parents never really pushed it on me, which I think is why I actually ended up coming back to it.
“I kind of started out wanting to find my own path as kids usually do, and I was really into hockey. Being a Canadian, hockey was a big deal, so that was probably my first sport that I loved to play. But then at the age of nine, my cousins were skiing and one of my cousins beat one of my personal records in tricks, which at the time was just a couple of hundred points and that really got my competitive side going and I started skiing just to be around friends and family, and at the age of nine, that’s when I really found my love for skiing and I’ve been going ever since.”
Llewellyn was born in Orlando, Fla., and grew up in a water-skiing family. His father has been a member of the Canadian national team for nearly three decades and has won every major water-skiing competition there is to win. His mother, Britta, who hails from Austria, is also a world-class water skier.
Growing up, Dorien was usually in tow travelling all over the world with his family at water-skiing competitions.
“It was awesome. It was a really cool experience as a kid to be a part of that and to go to all the biggest tournaments in the world,” Llewellyn said. “It helped me with my skiing coming down the road, because there were little things and little subtleties that I had in my subconscious watching my dad and my mom for so long.
“There are so many things, like my air form and jump, people tell me all the time that I look just like my dad, and those are things that I never even thought about. It was just something that seemed natural in the air. Watching him for so many years, I grew into that and also watching him for so many years in high-pressure tournaments.”
Llewellyn was so accustomed watching his father win on the water-skiing circuit, he remembers breaking down on one of the rare occasions Jaret did not win a major competition. He had to be consoled by his mother.
Once Llewellyn took up the sport competitively, travelling to competitions worldwide became a way of life.
“It’s awesome to go around the world,” Llewellyn said. “Going to Australia this year was one of my favourite trips in my entire life. But it’s always good to come back to your roots. I get to see my grandma every year when I come back to Alberta in the summer. It’s an added bonus being around friends and family and getting to do what you love at the same time.”
Having sustained a major knee injury a few years ago, Llewellyn is heading into the Canadian Open starting to feel like his old self. He is hoping a good performance in Edmonton puts him back on track to becoming the next water-skiing star in the line of his famous family.
Llewellyn is looking to branch out in a way not available to his parents when they started. Through his sponsorship with Red Bull, Llewellyn is becoming an internet sensation.
“It’s not just about living up to my dad’s name, but this new age we’re living in with social media and everything, I want to bring creativity to it,” he said. “If that is the one thing that sets me apart from my dad, that’s what I would want it to be.
“I have no problem bragging about my dad. He is the Wayne Gretzky of water-skiing. He’s the best three-event water skier of all time. On one hand, I want to live up to the name, but on the other hand, I want to branch out and find that creativity that I think a lot of skiing needs right now. We’re so focused on competition, and I think it’s such a beautiful sport that if you can find a cool video and throw it together and bring it to the public to show a completely different side that they don’t get to see, I want to do that.”