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Friendly but highly competitive surfer from Sydney, Australia; four-time winner of the New South Wales State Titles, and second runner-up in the 1966 Australian National Titles; one of Australia's original modern first-wave female surfers. "Dorothy is excellent at crank turns," 1964 world champion Midget Farrelly said of De Rooy in a 

 article, "and is extremely agile in walking to and from the nose. In fact, she could come out better in a critical situation than a lot of the boys would."

De Rooy, Dutch-born (1948), moved with her family to Australia in 1951, first to an immigrant Camp in Bathurst, 120 miles northwest of Sydney, and then to the beachfront suburb of Mona Vale, on Sydney's northern beaches. De Rooy first surfed at age 11, a borrowed plank-style board, at a local beach called the Basin. By age 13, with her own board, she began surfing regularly with Marilyn Bennett, Tayna Binning, and Pearl Turton, all of whom would go on to become nationally-recognized surfers. 

Athletic since childhood, De Rooy soon began entering local surf contests and in 1963 won the first of four straight New South Wales titles. In 1964 she competed in the first-ever World Surfing Championships but failed to advance from her prelim heat. "For a girl, Dorothy is aggressive," newly-crowned world champ Phyllis O'Donell wrote in 1964. "This is something the majority of girls lack."  

Not long after her competitive peak, De Rooy badly dislocated her shoulder during a wipeout at Dee Why Point. "I almost drowned," she later said, adding that she stopped surfing after that, and years later had to have the shoulder surgically repaired. 

De Rooy made a career working as a secretary for an ad agency. In the 1980s, she and her husband Vic Vidgen built a bright-yellow 36-foot steel-hulled boat, and the two spent over a decade sailing around the world, starting in 1996, just after De Rooy retired. "I've always had an affinity with the ocean," De Rooy said in 2019, adding that "surfing and sailing are very closely linked."

De Rooy, Dorothy

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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