Perhaps the only world champion to have spun her way to a title, Phyllis O’Donell passed away last week at the age of 87, with tributes coming from around the surfing world, led by eight-times world champion Steph Gilmore and seven-times world champion Layne Beachley, who both acknowledged her pioneering role in women’s surfing.
“Phyllie”, as she was known to her besties, came to surfing late and won her one and only world championship just four years later, at age 27, defeating the highly fancied Californian Linda Benson by performing spinners, or turn-arounds, at the first amateur world championships at Manly in May 1964.
The mercurial O’Donell, tiny, animated and glowing golden with fake tan all her life, claimed that the jazz she could hear being amplified from the beach on finals day (in front of 65,000 people) got her in the groove and she just danced and spun her way to victory. But her historic win in the inaugural world championships was no fluke. She remained a force in women’s surfing for the next half-dozen years, winning back-to-back Australian titles and finishing third in the 1968 world titles in Puerto Rico and winning a fistful of Queensland titles, even though she lived on the NSW side of the border.
Born in Sydney in 1937, O’Donell (her surname was misspelt frequently throughout her career) started surfing in 1960 and became a regular at Manly, where she was mentored by the legendary Snow McAlister. She moved to Banora Point on the Queensland border in 1963 and honed her skills riding a much-loved Joe Larkin board on the perfect point breaks of Coolangatta. Phyllis had shunned competitive surfing, but in late 1963 she was the surprise winner of the women’s division of the Sunday Telegraph Invitational at Bondi, alongside men’s winner Nat Young. In April 1964 Snow McAlister turned up at Banora Point and insisted on driving her back to Sydney to compete in the Australian titles. She surprised everyone—not least herself—by winning the nationals, and thereby gained entry into the first world championships.
Smooth stylist Linda Benson of California was widely recognised as the world’s best female surfer in 1964, but Phyllis O’Donell was not the least intimidated. There was no denying O’Donell’s natural talent, but her public appeal was always in her free-spirited approach and the sheer joy she seemed to derive from every wave. By her own admission, though, Phyllis later became a tough competitor, paddling her opponents down and dispensing colourful verbal abuse to anyone who got in her way.
In later life she loved to tell the story of how, when she became Australia’s first female world champ in 1964, in addition to her trophy, her prize was a carton of Craven A cigarettes. “And I smoked ’em all!” she would declare with a throaty chuckle.
Well into her eighties, Phyllis still loved to swim most days at a pool near her home, and was still vitally interested in the world of surf. She was inducted into the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame in 1996.
Vale Phyllis O’Donell 1937-2024
Mono misses out
It wasn’t old mate Mark “Mono” Stewart’s day at Huntington Beach last Saturday for the finals of the 2024 ISA World Para Surfing Championships, but Australia’s Irukandjis put up a great team effort to finish with a team bronze, our first time in the medals in several years.
After blazing through the Men’s Kneel in clean Santa Ana conditions at Huntington, Mono went into the final as top seed, looking for his fourth ISA world title and sixth overall. But it was not to be for the veteran, the oldest ever surfing world champion who turns 61 on Christmas Day, taking the copper medal while old rival and mate Llywellyn ‘Sponge’ Williams from Wales took the gold. Mono definitely looked like team elder, sporting a relatively new white seafarer’s beard, but he surfed like a teenager, one with a couple more titles in the tank.
France took the team gold for the second consecutive year, with a total of 10 medals, with USA taking the silver, Australia the bronze and Spain claiming fourth-placed copper.
For Australia Jocelyn Neumueller returned to the podium for the first time in quite a few years to take out her second gold in the women’s Prone 2 while Kai Colless edged out team-mate Joel Taylor in the men’s Prone 1 final.
FOOTNOTE: As is well known, Life of Brine avoids straying into the political arena, even in a week when it’s the biggest story in the world. So instead let’s just reflect on the prescience of HL Mencken, the great essayist and philosopher who could be quite scathing about flaws he saw in the political system.
“As democracy is perfected,” Mencken wrote, “the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.” Mencken published that prediction not last week but in July 1920.
