The inspiring story of Aussie surfer’s horror ride of Olympic wave that left her fighting for life
Australian surfer Olivia Ottaway almost lost her life at Teahupo'o last year. This is how she won the battle, miraculously returned to the surf, and her desire to conquer that same wave.
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The Olympic surfing venue of Teahupo’o was instant paradise to teenage surfer Olivia Ottaway, until one false step changed everything.
A picture might be a moment in time, but there is Ottaway (captured above); majestic, powerful, fearless – eternal.
Head raised, leg cocked, perfectly balanced as she grips her board and plummets beneath the waves.
A heavenly light penetrates the darkness.
The fury of Teahupo’o’s infamous break raging above her, yet Ottaway – just 14 years of age – has gained passage to a blissful sanctuary precious few are called to enter.
But as this idyllic picture, taken on August 19 last year by Getty Images snapper Ryan Pierse was scooping photography awards around the world, Ottaway was back home in Australia, writhing in pain on a hospital bed, fighting for her life.
It is barely recognisable at the bottom of this remarkable photograph, but Pierse can feel it brushing against his flippers as he presses the shutter.
The razor sharp coral reef, barely a metre or two below the surface. The reason why Teahupo’o loosely translates to “place of skulls”.
At some stage during her month-long stay lodging with family friend Nathan Hedge in the Tahitian village last year, Ottaway inadvertently nicked the reef, and unbeknownst to her a deadly infection penetrated her bones from a small cut in between her toes.
“I was fine and then legit a couple of hours after I landed back home in Sydney I went for a swim in the hotel pool and my skin was just feeling so irritated,” Ottaway recalls.
“I started shaking. I felt weak as. I felt cold, but I felt my head and I was burning hot.”
Thinking she must have come down with a flu from the flight home, Ottaway’s parents put her to bed dosed up with some Nurofen and in the morning she felt OK again.
Making the most of the journey down from Crescent Head on NSW’s mid-north coast to pick up their daughter from Sydney airport, the family (Olivia is the eldest of four girls) headed to a Canterbury Bulldogs NRL game.
“Out of nowhere sitting in my seat with probably five minutes left in the game, my foot just went stiff. Like, real weird,” Ottaway recalls.
“But I just thought I had cramp.”
Determined to squeeze in some quick Sydney shopping before hitting the highway, Ottaway pleads for the family to still pull into the DFO store on the way out of Homebush.
“We were there for about 10 minutes and then she was on the ground and we were like, ‘oh my gosh,” says mum, Kristel.
“It happened in front of the Nike shop,” says Luke, her father.
“I said, ‘come on, mate, get up. You’ll be right.’ But I was picking up dead weight. I said, ‘we’ve got to go now.’”
Googling for the nearest hospital while frantically battling a way through the gridlock of cars trying to exit the DFO at closing time, the Ottaways arrive at a hospital up the road only to be sent straight onto Royal North Shore, another half hour drive away.
“I just kept looking in the rear vision mirror. Her eyes were flickering. Olivia was saying, ‘I can’t go to any other hospital. ‘I can’t,’” Luke says.
“Everyone was panicking.
“She’s saying ‘I’m done, I’m done’ and I’m thinking, ‘I’m losing her, I’m losing her.’
“(When we got to the hospital), they looked at her and said, ‘we’ve got to move now.’’
Olivia was screaming in agony.
She was administered drug after drug. Endone, morphine, another needle, something to sniff, something to take.
She was allergic to one. So nurses quickly swapped it over and tried another set.
Meanwhile, infection levels kept going up.
The fear from doctors was septicemia; in other words, the infection poisoning her blood.
Olivia couldn’t sleep.
Even when she finally managed to nod off she would hallucinate, then be woken up to check her spiking temperatures again.
“This was all night. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t get rid of the pain,” Olivia says.
With three other scared and confused daughters to take care of, Luke left the hospital two days later to drive the younger girls back home to Crescent Head, while Kristel stayed behind and received the dire warning she had been dreading.
“I said to the doctor, ‘how bad is this? What are we looking at?’ She said, ‘well, I’m a bit of a pessimist but this could be really, really, really bad.’ As in, she could go,” Kristel says.
“I was trying to keep as strong as I could because I thought if I lost it, then she would lose it and I was the only one there. I had to keep as strong as I could.
“I spoke to Luke on the phone … ‘I’ve just been given the word outside the room that we could lose her.’”
Luke quickly billeted his other three girls out to stay with other families in Crescent Head, and jumped straight back on the freeway for a mad four and a half hour dash back to Sydney.
“When I arrived at the hospital I called up and had Olivia put on the phone. I said, ‘I’m here darling, you’ve just got to hang in there for me.’ She thought I was still in Crescent Head. I remember her seeing me and she just lost it. I lost it. We just hugged,” Luke says.
“I said, ‘I’m here darling, I’m here. It was a pretty emotional moment.”
The pain did not relent. The screaming did not stop.
“She said a couple of times, ‘I’m done. I’ve got nothing more to give. Just put me to sleep, dad.’”
Amputation became a serious consideration as the infection crept further up her leg.
“We had the plastic surgery team come in, they were drawing marks on her leg,” Kristel says.
Doctors feared osteomyelitis, and that is what it turned out to be.
“The worse-case scenario was if it got into joints and bones and all the little areas. It was causing these fractures. The infection was splintering the top of her foot as it was going through her bone,” Kristel recalls.
Olivia’s situation was so extreme she was barely cognisant of the fact she could have died.
“I wasn’t even focusing on that. I was in so much pain. I was out. Completely out,” Olivia says.
“I was laying on the bed for weeks and couldn’t get up. I couldn’t even sit. It was hectic. I could not put my leg down it hurt so bad.”
The first big break came a few weeks later when Olivia was finally able to get into a wheel chair.
“That meant the most to me, to get outside. Listening to the birds,” Olivia says.
Nurses wanted her transferred to Port Macquarie Hospital, but Olivia begged the doctor to let her go home and she was granted her wish.
Olivia’s gut had been decimated by all the medication. She was constantly sick. She had lost 10kg. But she was home.
An inspirational message of support arrived from surfing champion Stephanie Gilmore, who only a few months earlier had unwittingly gifted the aspiring teenage surfer her rash vest after completing a heat of the WSL event in Teahupo’o, during Olivia’s stay in the village.
“I know you’re going to get through this and we’re going to see you back in the surf very soon,” Gilmore said.
“I can’t wait to see you back in Tahiti charging again, you’re an awesome surfer.”
The video message, and others from Hedge and big wave surfer Laura Enever arrived at the perfect time for Olivia, as the enormity of what she had just endured set in and the fear of what might lay ahead finally infiltrated her thoughts.
A school friend had broken his leg, yet soon recovered to be walking again while Olivia remained wheelchair bound – angry and feeling alone.
Not so long ago, she was in the paradise of Teahupo’o rubbing shoulders with idols like Gilmore and well on her own path to becoming a pro surfer.
Now she was in purgatory.
“I was stressing about that. That I might not actually be able to surf again. I couldn’t imagine life without it,” Ottaway tells this masthead at a café on the mid-north coast.
“It’s so weird to get your head around that you won’t be able to do that again.
“Mum and dad didn’t really tell me that I was going to lose my foot because imagine if I was getting told that in the hospital. Mentally I would have got even worse.
“I had shut down. I didn’t have enough energy to even talk to people.”
But Ottaway refused to give up.
She started riding a push bike on the family paddock a couple of months back and her progress has slowly but surely snowballed from there.
“Her orthopedic team in Sydney have said don’t limit what you’re doing. Her infectious disease doctor said if it’s hurting slow down and stop. Don’t push it. It’s finding that right balance and seeing through each scan,” Kristel says.
“She has another MRI booked for June and then they’ll compare what that shows to the last one.
“They can see the bone (in her foot) is still swollen. Because of the damage to the joints, the bones have swollen and there is still damage there.
“They don’t think the infection is still in there. They don’t know, but they don’t think it is.”
For a child with osteomyelitis, the forecast is usually positive for a full recovery. For adults, there is the likelihood of chronic, life-long pain.
As a teenager caught somewhere in the middle, Olivia’s prognosis is still unknown.
On March 15, a remarkable milestone was ticked off when Ottaway made a comeback to the Australian junior surfing circuit at The Barney Miller Surf Classic, just eight months after she fought for her life in hospital.
“I went alright. I’m proud of myself. Semi-finalist is pretty good for me. I didn’t know I was going to do that well in my first comp,” Ottaway says.
“I’ve lost a lot of muscle. My left calf looks so much smaller than the right one. When I’m on the board, the front foot is trying to do everything. Trying to turn. This foot (the affected one) I’m trying to bring it back.
“I squeeze really tight so it’s ready if something does happen.”
Ottaway also made another memorable comeback for the Smithtown Tigers in the local League Tag competition.
Even though she still runs with a severe limp, Ottaway took a pass from her younger sister Isla, and managed to out-sprint four or five would-be chasers to score a try.
Her family and friends erupted.
“I couldn’t have been happier. I thought, ‘I can do this. I’ve actually got this,’” Ottaway says.
Ottaway has some goals.
She wants to give tackle rugby league a go and immerse herself back in the sporting life she once lived.
But most of all she wants to return to Teahupo’o.
This week the Olympic gold medal favourite and Tahitian local Vahine Fierro won the Tahiti Pro on a momentous day for women’s surfing where Brazilian Tatiana Weston-Webb also delivered the first ever “perfect 10” by a woman at Teahupo’o.
In late July, the Olympics will come to the famous break, and more history will be made.
The award-winning image of Ottaway captured by Pierse now adorns the wall of a coffee shop in Crescent Head where it is seen every day by a local community right behind her.
But it does not mark the end of her story.
“I’m glad the pictures of her got some recognition given what she’s gone through and hopefully it gives her some confidence and inspiration to get back on that board,” Pierse said.
“I could tell how fearless she was out there. Basically by herself out there that day in another country.
“I hope she can get back to the heights and the path she was potentially on to become a professional surfer.”
Whatever happens from here, 14-year-old, year nine student Olivia Ottaway wouldn’t change a thing.
“I kind of feel like, I’m kind of happy it all happened in a way. Not happy I guess, I still wish I was all 100 per cent, but that’s life,” Ottaway says.
“It’s a good thing to happen to me early.
“I’m living life. I could be dead tomorrow.
“It’s made me think, ‘go for it now. Don’t hold back.’”
Originally published as The inspiring story of Aussie surfer’s horror ride of Olympic wave that left her fighting for life
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