At age 15, Michelle den Dekker was the National Barefoot Water-Skiing Champion.
At age 15, Michelle den Dekker was the National Barefoot Water-Skiing Champion.
At her family’s shack on the river as a youngster, she had ridden 50cc motorbikes against the boys and beat them all.
In her late 20s and in front of millions of viewers, she famously took out the Celebrity Grand Prix race on Adelaide’s streets, beating aerial ski jumper, Kirstie Marshall. And Dame Edna Everage as well.
Michelle is that innate competitor. “If you do something you might as well do it hard. I don’t like mediocre. I have to give 100 percent, then practice a bit more if someone beats me. It’s an inherent drive, I don’t know where that comes from,” she says.
Her prodigious fitness levels were comparable with AFL footballers whose playing fields are considerably larger.
She is one of Australian netball’s most successful captains, a two-time world champion, leading her team to victory in 1991 and 1995, and also to gold in the 1990 Commonwealth Games.
Prime Minister Bob Hawke called the 1991 world cup victory 53-52 against NZ in the packed Sydney Entertainment Centre as the best sporting event he’d ever seen.
Michelle is widely considered one of the best and cleanest defenders to ever play for Australia, and by virtue of Australia’s ranking in the world, that must apply to her standing as one of the world’s best and cleanest defenders, if not the best.
She led a dominant Australian team to a remarkable 92 percent winning ratio in a record 71 matches as captain
She was voted as the best netballer SA has ever produced.
Michelle den Dekker was inducted into Sport Australia’s Hall of Fame in 2020, the Netball Australia Hall of Fame in 2009 and the SA Sport Hall of Fame in 2010.
Since retirement, she turned her hand to coaching – as head coach of the Queensland Firebirds and the Adelaide Thunderbirds – but then discovered a preference for development coaching.
She successfully lifted the defensive action of the Australian Diamonds defence line as a national team assistant and was appointed a development coach with the Australian U21 team.
She was a major part of the successful period with the SA State team, the Garville Netball Club and the Adelaide Ravens. Diamond #92.
