Cape Town - She's best known for her work as a TV presenter, voice artist and model.
But these days it’s her newfound title of “fitness freak” that’s garnering her the most attention. Liezel van der Westhuizen discovered fitness pageantry after falling off her mountain bike and injuring her knee, just before the Cape Epic last year.
A trainer at her gym suggested she train to strengthen her legs without compromising her knee and after her next mountain bike race she was sold on the idea. “I had the best race ever, I didn’t fall, I was strong,” she said.
Six weeks before the Miss SA Fitness Champions the trainer persuaded her to enter the bikini competition. She hadn’t shed any body weight and was noticeably losing body fat, but she would have to stop riding on the mountain bike.
“He said, ‘I know you, you’re going to fall and you’ll be all bruised and battered. Is this something you want to do? Why don’t you just enter for yourself, don’t use your full name, don’t make a big deal about it. Enter for your own confidence building’.”
She changed her training routine completely, as well as her diet. “You can’t do a racing and cardio workout with a body-building diet, so it was a lot of gym work, you had to bring in cardio, running and bike fitness just to help drop the body fat.”
Her parents didn’t even recognise her when she picked them up at Cape Town airport – partly because of the three layers of spray-on tan, she ruefully admits – and immediately asked: “What have you entered?”
“They didn’t realise a fitness competition had a bikini pageant, they were surprised, and they only recognised me (on stage) because my hair was so short.”
She came third in the Miss SA Fitness Pageant bikini body competition. “I went into this competition with the pre-conceived idea that it was all about steroids and it was this narcissistic world.
“I got there and the people I met each have their own journeys and stories to share. One guy was heavily into drugs and this was his way of getting over it. Another woman in her fifties entered her own category, and she’d just gone through a divorce.”
No longer shy to parade her own muscled body, Liezel has come to realise the fitness pageantry platform is huge in South Africa, especially since it caters to a variety of age groups or weight categories, some emphasising fitness, others the whole look of the body.
“You realise no one’s in the competition to win it but they’re in it for their own selfish reasons. So, yes, now I would walk down the street in a bikini.”
Later this year she has the choice of either competing in Miami, Florida, or staying at home to take part in an International Federation of Bodybuilding (IFBB) competition. (We’re rooting for Miami – any excuse to get out to Salsa country.)
For now though, her primary focus remains her first love, mountain biking. And maybe a triathlon or two thrown in for good measure. Rather her than us.
Weekend Argus