Boardom: Linda Benson

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The thrill is in the ride

What's New	Boarding America salutes those individuals who have had a profound influence on the sport and culture of surfing. Meet the men and women who started it all...	Silver Surfers: Linda Benson A native of Encinitas, California, Linda Benson started surfing when she was 11 years old. She learned to surf at Moonlight Beach, where she'd wait until her brother or one of his friends would lose a board and then she'd paddle it back out to him. At 13 her father let her buy her own, a beat-up old board that cost $20. At 5'2" and 105 pounds Benson would prove a gutsy and talented athlete, dominating women's competitive surfing for over 10 years. In 1959, at the age of 15, Benson became the youngest contestant ever to enter the International Championship at Makaha. She won. That same year she became the first woman to ride Waimea when she borrowed a board from the shortest guy surfing with her, paddled out and caught a couple of waves. Using the equipment of the early 50's, not to mention a goofyfoot in a time when most spots surfed were rights, she still managed to hold her own and gain respect for her fearless big wave riding and her ability to charge.
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Benson went on to win the first U.S. Championship at Huntington Beach in 1959 and continued to hold her title in 1960, '61, '64 and '68-setting the record for number of wins by a woman at that event. She tandem surfed with Don Hanson and Mike Doyle and was rated number one in a 1964 International Surfing magazine readers' poll. Winning over 20 first place surfing titles from 1959 to 1969, Benson still found time to act as Annette Funicello's surfing double in the Beach Party films and as Deborah Walley's surfing double in Gidget Goes Hawaiian. Benson also received a lot of publicity by surfing in John Severson's films. While considered by many to be the top woman surfer of all-time, Benson dropped almost completely from the surfing scene in the late 1960's when she became a flight attendant for United Airlines. She now lives in the Los Angeles area, still appears occasionally in surfing exhibitions and fund-raisers and still surfs as often as she can.