‘I kooked it’: Surfing legend Tom Carroll shaken, and embarrassed, after head injury

Tom Carroll made his name surfing monster waves off Hawaii in the 1980s, but it was a much smaller swell closer to home that upended the former world champion and left him strapped to a spinal board on North Narrabeen beach.

Carroll injured his head and neck after he slipped while taking off on a one-metre wave about 10am on Wednesday, tumbling head-first into his board.

“I think it was having sunscreen on my hands, to be honest. I slipped off the rail and fell on the board,” he told this masthead.

“I scorpioned myself … it was just the way I fell. I felt the strong impact and it went through my neck and sent off electrical charges right through the outside of my body.

“It all happened so quick, but I do remember everything – the crunch, and the feeling, and the loud sound within my head, and the fact this sort of shocked me, and I had to go in.

“It’s kind of embarrassing really. It was a wave of very little consequence, other than the fact I kooked it.”

Surfing legend Tom Carroll has been hospitalised with a head injury.Credit: Matrix

Carroll, a two-time world champion and three-time Pipe Masters winner, was in the water a day after celebrating his 63rd birthday.

He said his neck was immediately sore after the fall and when he went ashore, the lifeguards treated it as a spinal injury and called an ambulance.

He was taken to Northern Beaches Hospital where he received four stitches to his head but was cleared of any spinal damage. He plans to see his GP to determine if he needs any scans.

“My neck is not like a spring chicken, there’s a lot of history in it,” Carroll said.

Australian Tom Carroll competes in the Pipeline Masters in Hawaii in 2001.Credit: Reuters

Carroll wore a helmet when he won the Pipe Masters competition in 1987, after seeing a fellow surfer suffer a brain injury at Hawaii. He said he was not wearing one on Wednesday as it was an “average sort of day” surf.

“I never really think of wearing a helmet in those conditions, other than a sun hat,” he said.

“[I’ll wear one] when surfing decent-sized waves over a shallow reef, or foiling.”

Carroll is no stranger to surfing injuries, dislocating his knee and rupturing his stomach when he was a teenager in Sydney, and adding to the list once he joined the world surfing tour in 1979.

“At Waimea Bay I broke my leg, and pretty much tore my foot off the bottom of my ankle. That was a big haul, coming back from that.”

Carroll, who grew up in Newport, became the first goofy-footed world champion in 1983. He was crowned the world’s best surfer again in 1984 and won the prestigious Pipe Masters three times – in 1987, 1990 and 1991.

He signed a record-breaking $1 million contract with surfing brand Quiksilver in 1988, which was the biggest deal in surfing history at the time.

Get alerts on significant breaking news as it happens. Sign up for our Breaking News Alert.