Townend Still on a Wave That Carried Him From Down Under : Surfing: Former world champion is a success as a TV broadcaster, magazine publisher and single father of three.

Ever been slumped in your favorite chair, remote in hand, channel surfing the airwaves when you stopped to watch a real surfer streak down a wall of turquoise the size of a two-story building?

And then came the voice. The thick Australian accent. The high-pitched scream: “That’s like having an Olympic-sized swimming pool dumped on your head!”

Then you already know Peter Townend.

Townend, known simply as P.T. to a generation of surfers, was professional surfing’s first world champion in 1976. He began riding waves near his hometown of Kirra on Australia’s Gold Coast in his early teens, and became one of the “Bronzed Aussies”--along with surfing legends Ian Cairns, Mark Richards, Cheyne Horan and others--a group often credited with bringing surfing into the international spotlight.

Townend lives in Westminster now, just a 20-minute drive from the Huntington Beach pier and some of the Southland’s best waves. But he doesn’t get in the water as much as he’d like to anymore. He’s a single father raising three children, an associate publisher of Surfing magazine, runs junior surf camps and, of course, the sport’s loudest ambassador as a regular commentator for Prime Ticket’s surfing telecasts.

The guy is Dick Vitale in surf trunks.

“People have been telling P.T. to tone it down for about 40 years,” said Cairns, now director of the Bud Surf Tour. “But he’s so convinced that he’s 100% fundamentally right, he simply doesn’t listen to criticism, despite the fact that it’s often justified.”

Cairns was smiling.

The two have been close friends since the early ‘70s. At 17, Townend finished seventh in the 1970 Australian championships, Cairns was fourth. In ‘76, when Townend won the world championship, Cairns was ranked No. 2. In the early ‘80s, they were co-executive directors and co-coaches of the National Scholastic Surfing Assn. And, in 1983, they co-founded the Assn. of Surfing Professionals.

It was in 1972, when they traveled together as members of the Australian team that competed in the World Championships in San Diego, that Cairns got his first insight into what would turn this diminutive teen-ager into a champion.

“P.T. had already analyzed the situation, he knew the surf was going to be different, weaker, and that he would need different equipment,” Cairns said. “Everyone else came over expecting to ride OK waves. He came expecting to ride California surf. We were all concentrating on surfing well and he was concentrating on winning. He finished third, higher than any other Australian, and that blew us away.

“Like in most sports, there are people who are just naturally very talented and others who are consummate competitors. P.T. was always a great surfer, but his primary skills were analysis, consistency and knowing how to compete. He always seemed able to lift his surfing act a little beyond himself as a competitor.”

Cairns, and everyone else who was there, will never forget the day Townend’s surfing act was tested to the limits.

It was the winter of 1974. A storm in the Pacific was sending 30-foot waves cascading into the mouth of Waimea Bay on Oahu’s north shore. The promoters of the Smirnoff Championships decided to hold the contest, anyway.

As anyone who has ever stood on the beach at Waimea Bay when the surf was bigger than 20 feet can attest, the ground literally shakes with each breaking wave. It’s frightening just to stand there.

Townend, whose mastery of small surf had left him with a tag as the “Three-Foot-and-Under Man,” was faced with paddling out and attempting to ride these awe-inspiring monsters.

“P.T. always had pink trunks and pink surfboards and carried on a bit like a girl,” Cairns said, smiling again. “But, really, he was labeled as a small-wave surfer who didn’t have the guts to ride big waves. But he went out, with Waimea Bay closing out. You have to understand that a wipeout means you can easily drown. In this kind of surf, every time you take off, you take the risk of dying.

“He had everyone’s respect after that.”

Townend came away with more than respect and one fewer nickname. He finished fourth, a little-wave specialist making a big splash in the big-wave boys’ hallowed bay.

It was a turning point in his pro surfing career.

“I had never surfed Waimea before and it was really massive,” Townend said. “A lot of people thought (promoter Fred) Hemmings was nuts for going ahead with the contest.”

Cairns’ black-humored words of wisdom--”Remember, you always come up. You may come up dead, but you’ll always come up”--did little to assuage his fears.

“I was in the second heat and Mark Richards, who was only 17, was in the first heat,” Townend said. “It was just peer pressure. If he went out, then I had to go out. And wouldn’t you know? The only time in my life when I didn’t really want to get through a heat, I end up winning my semifinal and, lo and behold, I’m the only Australian in the final.”

Townend found himself paddling to catch waves he never even dreamed of, and, worst yet, catching them. Surviving, not winning, was the goal of every surfer.

“The main thing I remember is that it was bloody big and scary,” he said. “Anybody who says he wasn’t scared that day is lying. But it changed my whole philosophy about surfing in Hawaii. I never stopped respecting the power of those waves, but I never was intimidated again.”

Townend never was one to shy away from anything. Not big waves, or big decisions, or huge responsibilities. And clearly not microphones.

He was offered a scholarship to study architecture at a university in Newcastle, an unusual opportunity in a country where educational aid is scarce. His competitive surfing career was just taking off, however, and he decided to draw lines on waves instead.

“I was a pretty good athlete in high school, not really outstanding in anything,” he said. “I had just come in second in the ’71 Australian junior championships and really wanted to make the team going to San Diego the next year.

“I told my dad that surfing was the one thing I could do that’s beyond ordinary and I owed it to myself to try and make the team. I made a deal with him that if I didn’t, I’d go to school.”

Townend moved up to the men’s division, took second and made the team. Four years later, he was the top surfer in the world.

Townend dropped to No. 14 the next year, primarily because he was too busy surfing for money to concentrate on professional surfing. He was William Katt’s double in the movie “Big Wednesday,” working on location in California, El Salvador and Hawaii.

“I made more money on ‘Big Wednesday’ than I ever made in surfing,” Townend said. “In ‘76, when I won the world championship, I made $26,000. I used to go home to Australia, work shaping surfboards and making pies in a pastry shop, then save all my money to go to Hawaii for four months.

“I was the first guy to get an endorsement from Quiksilver and they paid me in trunks. Everybody I knew got those pink-and-black trunks for Christmas. Ian and I used to borrow money from each other until the next guy won enough to pay it back.”

Townend’s been making a living from the surf industry since, but it hasn’t been one easy tube ride. He started selling ads for the magazine a decade ago and worked his way up. His broadcasting career began on a public-access show.

He’s no laid-back Aussie, on the air or off. And maybe he adapted to the U.S. rat race too well. He says the price might have been his 13-year marriage.

“I got caught up in the American workaholic syndrome,” he says.

As a result, he’s raising his daughter and two sons--Rana, 13, Jye, 10, and Tosh, 8--pretty much on his own. The pace gets hectic, but Townend doesn’t figure to buckle under the pressure.

More likely, he’ll find a way to win.

“What tears you apart is the effect it has on the children,” he said. “But I look at it this way, I’ll have a great relationship with my kids for the rest of my life and I’ll be a better person for dealing with the turmoil.

“Sometimes I wish I could get out in the water more, but I’m bringing up the kids and most of my time goes into that, and that’s fine. There will always be another wave to ride.”