ANDY Mapple, who's that? is the question most likely to be asked when you mention the name of one of Britain's most outstanding sportsmen of the past two decades.

Speak his name in America, however, and you are likely to hear almost godlike adulation of a great sporting hero.

For water skiing is big over there and Mapple is said by just about everybody in the know to be the best slalom skier who has ever lived.

There is also a touch of irony in that Mapple, five times world champion, 11 times world record holder, four times world cup winner and holder of innumerable American, Australian and European titles, owes his love of water-skiing to childhood family holidays at Windermere, where the authorities are at present pushing though the 10mph by-law which will banish the sport from the lake.

Mapple, who grew up near Preston, but whose family now live at Windermere, was just 13 when he took his first faltering ride behind a speedboat on the lake, yet five years later he won his first world slalom title.

That was way back in 1981 and remarkably he is still the one to beat, picking up his fourth World Cup title last season..

Slalom skiing involves zigzagging down a course of six buoys behind a boat moving at 35mph.

Every time the skier completes the course the between skier and boat is shortened.

Mapple's world record stands at getting past one buoy on a line of around 30 feet, which when stretched out at right angles to the rear of a boat travelling down the centre of the slalom run, is 4ft 6 inches short of the buoy.

Mapple has to use his great skill and all the reach his 6ft 2inch frame can give him to get round the buoy while angled only inches above the water.

The acceleration caused by the zigzagging means that he is also travelling at around 60mph and holding a pull of around 1000 pounds.

Even Mapple is surprised by the facts behind the record he has broken time and time again over the years and is on record as saying that for a long time there was a general belief that the limit would be reached when the rope was six inches short of the buoy.

Despite his proud to be British attitude which sees him represent the UK in all major competitions Mapple has lived in Orlando for the past 13 years, since his marriage to Deena Brush, former US women's jump skier.

They have two children.

With the sport having a much higher profile than in Britain Mapple, with his great technical skills, is in demand as a tester and developer of water skies and it is that work which has helped him stay at the forefront of the sport for so long.

Yet it is not just the access to technical innovations which make him hard to beat despite being in his late 30s.

He still loves the sport and tries to ski every day, but above all it is the natural aptitude he first developed in those early lessons on Windermere which keep him at the top.

He also has one major ambition, with slalom water skiing being a likely candidate for the Olympic Games in Athens he has set his sights on gold for the pinnacle of his rem arkable achievement.