"The Sport I can't Live Without"

Self Magazine: January 2001

When Catherine Bell saw videos of professional wake-boarders doing "double front flips in the air" as they catapulted over a boat wake, she thought: I can do that. "They make it look so easy," chuckles the star of the CBS drama JAG.

Bell, an inveterate adventure seeker, buckles her feet to a board, and, as she's pulled behind a boat, performs jumps and flips over its wake. After two summers of "face plants and whiplash", the 32-year-old made her first truly successful run on the board. "Now I'm cutting back and forth getting spray," she explains

Wakeboarding has become Bell's sport of choice. "It's hard to get myself to workout, but [wakeboarding] is so much fun I don't mind," she says. Plus "it works every muscle in your body: your lats, your arms, you butt, all the way down. You're pulling against a 3,000-pound boat."

Though there are plenty of women in the pros, Bell says she says she doesn't see many out in the lakes. "Guys think it's cool that I can do it," she says. "I get close to them, spray their boats and show off a little."

© 2001 Conde Nast Publications. All rights reserved.

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