Willy Stähle

Willy Juana Stähle (16 June 1954 – 27 August 2015)[1] was a Dutch world water skiing champion.

As a young child, Stähle lived in Venezuela, where she learned water skiing from her father.

Stähle won a gold and a silver medal at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich for women's figure skiing and slalom, respectively; however, Olympic water skiing was considered a demonstration sport at the time and her medals did not go toward the official count.

In 1975, after winning 26 European titles, Stähle retired from water skiing at the age of 21.

On 7 August 1983, she suffered a spinal cord injury in a parachute jump, leaving her paraplegic at the age of 29.