Manly – The Competitive Tsunami
If Makaha and Peru were the initial ripples in the history of pro surfing, then the World Surfing Championships at Manly was a tsunami. In 1964, surfing in Australia was breaking from its fringe status, having separated itself from the surf club culture and was ripe for a jolt. Surfing was set to explode, but it had yet to completely permeate Australian beach culture. The World Surfing Championships would change all that.
Curiously set at Manly instead of the more popular beach at Bondi, the contest crowned the first official world champions Bernard “Midget” Farrelly and Phyllis O’Donell. Organized by Bob Evans (surf film maker and publisher of Australian Surfing World Magazine), the contest kicked off on May 17th before a mass of spectators conservatively estimated at 65,000.
In contrast to Makaha and Peru, the Australian event resembled something closer in kin to today’s professional surfing contests in that a major sponsor, Ampol Oil, not only sponsored the event but also covered lodging for all of its international contestants. Judges were flown in from each of the host countries to curb tomfoolery and inconsistencies in scoring as had been seen at Makaha. Live television beamed all the surf action across the Australian continent as news helicopters hovered overhead. This was pure surfing theater for the thousands in attendance.
Midget won the Makaha contest a year prior and steamed into the final a local favorite in 1964, but Californian Mike Doyle and Hawaii’s Joey Cabell were red hot in the fun 2-4 foot surf at Manly, especially Cabell. According to many, Cabell “should have won” based on his surfing talent alone. However, in a departure from his gentlemanly persona, he aggressively dropped in on several surfers, possibly putting off the judges. For a contest that emphasized the international brotherhood of surfing, Cabell’s tactics may have cast him in a negative light and resulted in deductions, even from fellow American surfer and Judge, Phil Edwards.
As the final competitors exited the water, surfers and organizers knew something special had occurred. The Manly Surfing Championships forever altered surfing in Australia and beyond. Midget Farrelly and Phyllis O’Donell were now permanently etched at the zenith of competitive surfing history. In the years following the contest, surfing would infiltrate every aspect of Australia’s beach culture, and the “cult” of surfing quickly became a commodity as it had in America years earlier. Even though O’Donell remembers that as the first World Champ, she won $250, several cartons of cigarettes, and a surfboard; the Manly World Surfing Championships are still heralded as the origin of the competitive surfing juggernaut that continues to accelerate design innovations and wave riding performance today.
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