Some regard global surfski champion Oscar Chalupsky as overbearing. To others, he’s an icon, especially since he beat cancer. This report by his biographer Graham Spence.
Oscar has an ironclad will. It has helped him in sport, business and life. When he asked me to write his book I couldn’t refuse. I have always been intrigued by his singular sense of purpose.
I am not a big social media user, but on November 29, 2019 something made me log on to Facebook. A message popped up on my screen. It was short – just five terse words. “Big O has big C”.
I read it several times in disbelief. Oscar Chalupsky, the toughest, most competitive and arguably most successful watersport competitor in the world has cancer? The guy who takes positive thinking and self-belief to stratospheric heights; the guy who has defied every imaginable athletic axiom regarding age, stamina, and endurance is now stricken by a killer disease?
I shook my head. No – it couldn’t be true. Oscar is indestructible.
Oscar contacted me later to confirm the dreadful news. His voice boomed over the phone, vibrant and laughing, hardly the voice of a sick man. “It’s multiple myeloma,” he said. “Incurable. So we’d better start writing that book.”
I have known Oscar for close on 40 years, although for much of the time we have either lived in different towns or countries. We had talked before about doing a book, but had never got around to it.
But things had now changed, faster than any of us imagined. As Oscar said, now was the time to start writing. However, Murphy’s law predictably came into effect as I had moved to England and was about to ghost-write another book with a tight and contractually enforceable deadline. I couldn’t start working with Oscar for at least another six months.
But when someone has incurable cancer, deadlines take on a far more significant meaning. So I asked, as delicately as possible, how much time we had to write the book? Oscar laughed. “Plenty – no rush at all.”
“But your cancer is incurable?” I said.
“That’s what the doctors say. Not me. I’m just hanging in until they find a cure. No problem.”
As soon as I was free we started the book. Much of what we wrote I had witnessed firsthand, starting in 1983 with Oscar winning the 250km offshore surfski race between Port Elizabeth and East London that was then called the Texan Challenge. A year or so later, I spent two weeks living on a shoestring in Hawaii with him when he won his third successive Molokai 2 Oahu ocean race. For the next 15 years, I would get phone calls from around the world at inhospitable hours updating me on whatever race he was competing in. Every call was upbeat as a chat with Oscar lifts the gloom no matter what time he rings. The added bonus was that many of those calls resulted in front-page stories for the various newspapers I worked for. Oscar was what we in the trade called “colourful copy”.
If anyone can beat multiple myeloma – one of the deadliest strains of the globe’s most lethal disease – it is Oscar. His idea of “hanging in” is simple. No retreat. No surrender. He is still out there paddling oceans, cycling, swimming, playing golf, keeping fit.
He has an innate, irrepressible cheerfulness and an unconquerable will. His sheer appetite for life makes him as indomitable as ever.
I was chatting with KZN INVEST editor Greg Ardé about irrepressible Oscar and the phenomenon that he is. It is almost freaky. What is it about Oscar that makes him so absolutely convinced he will win?
Greg says Oscar seems to have the capacity to convince himself of anything. He spoke to Oscar’s dad once who seemed quite incredulous about this phenomenon of indomitable Oscar. Oscar’s brother, Herman, who is in so many ways the polar opposite of Oscar, also has the winning streak, but it is expressed very differently. At Herman’s 40th birthday party Oscar gave a speech crediting his younger brother for always being at his heels, chasing him, driving that competitive spirit. It was surely a contributing factor, but it doesn’t entirely account for Oscar’s ironclad will and single-mindedness.
One line from the book sticks out that might explain it: Oscar speaking, as only Oscar can: “If anyone beats me, they were lucky, not better. Sure, I have been beaten in my career, but that mindset of self-belief – irrational or not – has never left me. It’s seared into my subconsciousness.”
Oscar is donating a portion of his royalties from this book to Campaigning for Cancer, or C4C, as the overwhelming majority of cancer fighters in Africa are not wealthy. It’s a sad fact that without expensive medication, life expectancy is short, sharp and painful. For those on this continent unable to get treatment, there is no more powerful ally than Oscar Chalupsky.
Note: Graham Spence is a journalist, editor and author. His previous books include The Elephant Whisperer with Lawrence Anthony, and Saving the Last Rhinos: The Life of a Frontline Conservationist with Grant Fowlds.