Danny Bertels is one of the most unusual sportsmen Belgium has produced. He was crowned world champion in water-ski racing in Milan in 1981 and again in Sydney in 1983. From 1991 to 1993, he dominated UIM F3, taking three consecutive world titles before stepping up to the UIM F1 World Championship, where he finished third overall in 1995. Now 66, he is preparing to become a grandfather: his daughter, Roxanne Bertels, and her partner, Tour de France cyclist Mathieu Van der Poel, are expecting their first child.
A Teenage World Champion on Water Skis
Many will remember Bertels from his Valvoline-sponsored F3 and F1 days, but long before that he was a teenage water-skiing star, racing regularly in Australia and across Europe.
Bertels’ passion began at the age of nine, when he and his father passed a canal and saw someone water-skiing. His father suggested they might buy a boat one day.
Bertels on his rapid rise:
A few years later, when I was eighteen, I was among the world elite.
Largely self-taught, he likened the sport to cyclocross: roughly an hour of highly technical, physically demanding racing. The biggest difference was the travel. As a water skier, he followed the summer around the world, often competing in the US or Australia while it was cold at home.
Bertels on the era before regular long-haul flights:
It wasn’t easy. Today there are two flights a day to Australia from every major airport. Back then, there was one flight a week, from Amsterdam to Sydney. But it was an invaluable adventure. Australia had thousands of competitive skiers. I had my own team, with my uncle steering the boat. Otherwise, wealthy American boat owners paid me to win races behind their boats. It was a fantastic life.
As a teenager, Bertels went on to beat the Australians at their own sport. For seven years he dominated water skiing, and one story from June 1982 shows just how well known he had become.
Bertels recalling an audience with the Pope during the 1982 European Championship in Italy:
I had a competition in Italy, on a lake near Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence. He heard our speedboats that morning and wondered what the noise was. Water skiers? That same afternoon, as leader of the European Championship, I was received by him. First there was an official moment, then he took me to a back room where we sat and chatted quietly, about my sport, his studies in Leuven, anything but faith.
Somewhere in the Vatican, Bertels jokes, one of his water skis may still exist.
When Björn Borg was received by the Pope, he gave him a tennis racket. Eddy Merckx, widely celebrated as the greatest professional road cyclist in history, gave him a bicycle. So I left a ski behind. At the next papal election, it probably became firewood.
Even so, Bertels retired from water skiing at 23, with three European titles and two world titles to his name.
I could make a living from it, but no more than that.
Three Straight World Titles in UIM F3
Within a few years, Bertels was back competing on the water. An old acquaintance from water skiing had asked if he wanted to go to the 24 Hours of Rouen as a third driver.
It was a small team, but after 24 hours all the top teams had dropped out and suddenly we had won the race.
Bertels had discovered another talent.
Strange, but I picked it up quickly. It was all about concentration and physical fitness. Fitness was my trump card: I climbed out of the boat fresh after a race, while the other drivers were exhausted.
When Bertels won the 1991 UIM F3 world title it was assumed that he would move straight on to the UIM F1 Championship, but that wasn’t the case. Not only did he decide to campaign his own Valvoline-sponsored hull again in F3, he also introduced a three-boat team, which included Italian Guido Ongaro and the young, relatively unknown American Dean Chew, to run with him in the oil company’s colours. Bertels won five of the eight grands prix that made up the 1992 championship, taking his second title by 24 points from Gert Ladefoged.
By the end of the 1993 season, thirty drivers from twelve different countries had tried their hardest to wrestle the title away from the immensely professional Belgian driver, but none had succeeded. Bertels had driven his Valvoline-sponsored Burgess hull to another five victories and his third title in as many years. Much to the relief of those competing against him, Bertels then announced he was off to UIM F1.
Podiums, a Crash in Hangzhou, and a Decision to Stop
That move proved difficult, and Bertels took time to establish himself in UIM F1. Accustomed to podium finishes, his first champagne celebration came in Cardiff with Michael Werner and Guido Cappellini, and then five months later in Abu Dhabi with Felix Serralles and Mike Seebold.
His second season proved to be a roller coaster ride. Podium visits in Hungary, France and Abu Dhabi, where he finished second to Jonathan Jones at the season’s close, were certainly the high points, but a massive crash in Hangzhou, China, with Britain’s Andy Elliott, which curtailed the race after 50 laps, left him with some serious thinking to do. Even though he finished the season third overall, it was time to hang up his helmet.
With those boats, you went from zero to 220 kilometres per hour in seconds and I began to see more fatalities than I did in water skiing, it was time to stop.
From the Cockpit to the Basket
For a man who grew up loving high speed, his next venture couldn’t have been more sedate.
He acquired his balloon pilot’s licence, a qualification that normally takes three years, in just nine months, and set up a professional passenger balloon company, Bertels Ballonvaarten, which flies in the Antwerp Kempen region.
His racing backers followed him up: he bought his first balloon from Cameron Balloons near Bristol, describing them as the Rolls-Royce of the trade, and signed a contract with Valvoline to fly 100 times a year.
He set records in the basket too, covering 238 kilometres over Belgium in six hours without crossing restricted airspace, comfortably beating the previous mark of 172 kilometres, in a specially adapted basket carrying 11 gas tanks.
Once during a flight with him, he mentioned that he got more money from Mercury Marine flying their corporate guests than he ever did when he was powerboat racing.
It wasn’t to last, though.
The highly likeable man has admitted that perhaps he had used up a lot of his nine lives: first he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, then struck by a debilitating stroke which left him in critical condition in hospital, and from which he has never fully recovered.
The right side of my body just won’t cooperate anymore. There were days when I could barely get out of bed. And then there’s that memory. Back in 1987 I raced through the Sahara desert for five days without a compass, but now I get lost in the supermarket.
A Grandfather in Waiting
Sport has returned to Bertels’ life through his daughter, Roxanne, who recently announced that she and her partner, Mathieu Van der Poel, are expecting their first child in January 2027. Van der Poel is currently competing in this year’s Tour de France for UCI WorldTeam Alpecin-Premier Tech.
Because of the demands of elite sport, something Bertels understands well, he rarely sees Van der Poel. Even so, he has noticed echoes of his own competitive mindset.
I text him after a race. Then I realise how he resembles me in one thing: only winning counts, being second is losing.
Roxanne first met Van der Poel in Finland in 2018 while organising a work trip for Porsche Centre Antwerp.
I didn’t really know who he was. I knew he was a cyclist, but I had no idea about the cycling world at all. But I think it was good to start with a clean slate, without having any opinion of him.
Thanks to the eight-time cyclo-cross world champion, she has become more active in sport herself.
I wish I was as driven as he is. He gives everything for everything in life.
Echoes of her father, perhaps.
If it happened in powerboat racing during the last forty years the chances are that Chris Davies was there either photographing it or writing about it.
During that time, he has travelled the globe covering both offshore and circuit racing for series promotors, race teams, PR companies, and a whole raft of publications.
