Five-time world individual barefoot champion and four-time world team barefoot champion, Rachel George Normand is one the most decorated U.S. Women’s barefoot water ski athletes of all time. Growing up in Canton, Ohio, Normand began barefooting and water skiing in competitions in 1990 at age ten and joined the Sea World Water Ski Team in Aurora, OH in 1997.  She went on to win numerous national and international honors throughout her illustrious career.  Normand won eight National Barefoot Water Ski titles.  Winning her first US title in 1999 her success and dominance on the water culminated over the next seven years as she went on to be undefeated from 2001-2007.  She shares the honor of winning seven consecutive US titles with Hall of Fame Inductees Jennifer Calleri and Lori Powell-Drell.  At the 2004 World Barefoot Championships she won gold in slalom, tricks and jump.  In 2006 she won the overall world title and the successfully defended her world jump title.  In 2004, Normand won the prestigious IWSF Barefoot Skier of the Year award and the Banana George Blair Barefooter of the Year Award. That same year she became the only female barefoot athlete to win the USA Water Ski Female Athlete of the Year award.  In 2001, Normand was the World Games Silver Medalist in Slalom, Tricks, Jump, and Overall.  She has been the ABC Female Athlete of the Year three times, and was an Olympic Training Center participant for barefoot waterskiing in 1996.

 

Normand became a certified barefoot instructor in 2006 and remains a member of the World Barefoot Instructors Association. In 2005, she was the Coach/Manager of the silver medal winning Junior World Barefoot Water Ski Team. Normand continues to barefoot at her current home in South Carolina and is working to support the U.S. Barefoot Alumni Association and their mission of continuing to nurture and grow the sport of barefoot waterskiing throughout the nation.