World champion wakeboarder Brad Smeele seemed to be living the dream. A model and former Cleo Bachelor of the Year contestant, Brad left New Zealand at 17 to tour the pro wakeboarding circuit, winning acclaim for his high-performance tricks.
And after a decade of hard work, it was all paying off. Brad was finally making a decent income from chasing his passion, and was living and working on the edge of Lake Ronix, a private park for die-hard wake-boarders in Florida. “I would get up in the morning then swim, paddle and wakeboard till the sun went down,” says Brad, 28.
The Kiwi helped to develop the park and is still a part owner. “It is like a floating skate park with rails and ramps,” he says. “I did everything from planting palm trees to using a digger to grade the beach. I’d never worked so hard in my life, but I loved what I was doing.”
Well known for his tricks, Brad was among the first wakeboarders to land a 1080-degree jump.
The park had just been finished when a freak accident on the lake Brad loved so much tore his future away. On a quiet July morning in 2014, he was attempting a daring double flip, known as a “double tantrum to blind”, when things went horribly wrong and he ended up shattering his C4 vertebrae in his neck.
Eighteen months on from that fateful day, Brad is back in Auckland and adjusting to life as a quadriplegic. “What crushed me most about the accident was that I had everything I wanted in life and it was all taken away.”
Water sports are in Brad’s blood. His mother, Linda Smeele, was a top water-skier in her day, setting a record for being the first woman in NZ to jump more than 30 metres from a ramp. When
he was 12, a friend introduced Brad to wakeboarding and he was hooked.
“I knew it was what I wanted to do in life,” he says. Brad’s professional career was launched at the age of 17, when he won the World Junior Wakeboard Championships in Seville, Spain. But the accolade wasn’t the teen’s only attraction to the sport. “What is not to like about wakeboarding?” he enthuses. “Endless summers, girls in bikinis … I loved the buzz of landing a new trick – the adrenaline rush that goes with it.”
Two weeks before his accident, Brad had successfully landed the double tantrum to blind in Germany. It was a world first that later won “Trick of the Year” at the annual Wake Awards. Back at Lake Ronix, he put pressure on himself to recreate it for a film crew.
After a three-month recovery in Florida, Brad returned to NZ to continue his treatment.
Tragic accident
Brad says he was always safety-conscious on the water and on the day he had the accident, he made sure a CPR-trained friend was on hand. “But something wasn’t right,” he recalls. “It was a Sunday morning and I wouldn’t usually do a trick like that early in the day. I didn’t spend enough time warming up.”
Brad made a few attempts before taking off from the ramp. “As soon as I was in the air, I knew I had gone too big,” he recalls. “I hit the ramp head-first. When my friends reached me, I was face-down in the water and unconscious.”
Three months after the tragedy, Brad arrived back in his hometown of Auckland. He’s now living on the North Shore, helped out by caregivers and surrounded by a supportive posse of family and friends. “People say I’m strong and I credit my parents for that,” he says. “My mother had breast cancer and was back at work within a week of surgery. My father has lived with Parkinson’s disease for 22 years and just gets on with life.”
The challenge now for Brad is how to reinvent himself. “I’ve always been physical,” he tells. “The accident has given me the opportunity to get to know who I am beyond that.”
Brad has begun making a documentary about his life, but he refuses to film the ending while he’s still in a wheelchair. “I accept this is how I am at the moment, but I do not accept that this is how I will always be.”
As well as focusing on his own recovery, Brad has begun motivational speaking and is raising money for spinal cord research. And although life today is a far cry from his days at Lake Ronix, wakeboarding is never far from his mind. In his dreams, Brad sees himself on the water and would love to make his visions a reality.
Speaking of his positive outlook towards life, he says, “It sounds funny, but I do feel lucky. I have done more in my life than many people do in an entire lifetime.”
Brad, wearing a T-shirt he designed himself, credits his mum Linda, a cancer survivor, for his positive outlook on life.
