“Nothing like a fin up the bum”
Two-time world champion Tom Carroll gave the surf world a scare (and all of Australia, for that matter) Wednesday morning when he was rushed to the hospital in North Narrabeen. Initial reports had very little information but stories started flying around the internet when images surfaced of Carroll holding his neck after getting out of the water and rushed to the hospital on a stretcher. Lifeguards strapped Carroll down to a spinal board.
Carroll jumped online as soon as he was discharged, however, to announce that everything was “A-OK.”
“It’s OK, I’ve just got a few stitches in the head and a very sore neck, so some spinal, but I was cleared by the docs, and (I’m) A-OK,” he said in an Instagram video. “I’m so thankful that I’m here, standing on my own feet talking to you about it.”
“This is really nothing like a fin up the bum,” his brother, Nick said, joking about Tom’s notorious Niijima Beach wipeout back in the 80s. That spill cost Tom Carroll 13 stitches — some of them inside his anal cavity where one of his own fins had sliced him.
Wednesday’s wipeout was clearly serious enough for Carroll to be rushed to the hospital but in the end, the new fin gash to the head called for just four stitches and probably won’t go down in infamy like the Niijima dustup. Carroll even told his brother he’d take the stitches to the head and a sore neck over that 40-year-old war story.
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