How extraordinary that news of the death of one of the world’s oldest Olympians should come on the eve of the 33rdOlympiad in Paris.
Australian swimmer, Frank O’Neill, who died in his birthplace, Manly, Sydney aged 97, had participated in the 15th Olympiad in Helsinki seventy-two years ago.
Born on 30 September, 1926, Francis Thomas O’Neill was the only son of Tom O’Neill, a veteran of the Great War, a gunner in the AIF, who managed the baths at Manly, the legendary beachside suburb of Sydney. His mother, Edda, ran the kiosk. The family – Frank and his two sisters - lived above the baths.
The water was his life. He surfed at nearby North Steyne beach and, as a key member of their surf team, won the New South Wales title in 1944. He also played for the Manly Swimming Club water polo team who won the state championship in 1946.
In January 1948, having set a New South Wales record for 55 yards freestyle (27.0 seconds) - and earned some money as a dental technician - he paid his own way to London in the hope of a late entry into the Australian relay team at the Olympics that July. But his trip was in vain. He was not allowed to swim.
In December 1949, back in his home pool, he became the first Australian to swim 110 yards freestyle under one minute. He attributed his feat to a fellow swimmer who said she would only sleep with him if he broke the record.
He had to wait two more years to represent his country. It was the 1950 Empire Games in New Zealand where he won 2 Silver medals - for the 110 yards freestyle and the 4×220 yards freestyle relay.
Meanwhile, returning home on the Orcades, he had met the Honourable Patricia Cavendish, only daughter of the late Brigadier-General Frederick ‘Caviar’ Cavendish and the ‘Stucco Venus’, the glorious four-times widowed grand horizontale, Enid Countess of Kenmare.
After the war, Enid's elder son, Rory Cameron, Pat’s half-brother, inspired by Palladio’s Villa Rotunda, had transformed his late step-father Lord Furness’s La Fiorentina into one of the most luxurious houses in Europe. On the extreme end of the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat peninsula, the garden, the infinity pool …… everything, was exquisite. The famous flocked - minor and fallen royals (among them the Duke and Duchess of Windsor), Churchill, the Mosleys, Rothschilds, Garbo, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Barbara Hutton.
Enid had rather hoped Rainier, the son of her friend, Prince Louis of Monaco, would marry her daughter but love blossomed with a fellow Australian and Pat and Frank married in Nice in September 1950.
Frank took up instructing in the villa's pool. He tried to teach Greta Garbo to breaststroke although “I could never persuade her to put her face into the water”. He even taught Enid's neighbour and bridge partner, Somerset Maugham, to dive. It was Maugham who dubbed Enid 'Lady Killmore'
Frank kept in shape and was selected to compete in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki; in fact, as the most senior member, he was named Captain of the swimming team. He would swim in the 110 yards freestyle, 110 yards backstroke and the 4×220 yards freestyle relay.
Preparations in Townsville were rigorous. The team diary notes included: “No late nights; no dancing; no surfing; no lengthy sunbaking; no smoking and no drinking hard liquor. Team members must have ten hours sleep a night, drinking plenty of milk and eating a lot of steaks were encouraged with the promise of seeing a film about once every ten days.”
Perhaps that was why Frank did not make it beyond the heats in Helsinki.
A message from Pat seeking a divorce during the camp may not have helped. An indefatigable ladies' man, Frank's faithlessness and the fact that Pat had fallen in love with Count Aymon de Roussy de Sales led Enid to hire a female private detective to follow him. But of course, the detective fell in love with him and refused to give evidence.
Pat and Frank finally divorced in 1954 and she wed her Count.
Frank retreated to Sydney and retired with his dozen national swimming titles. He created his own sportswear brand then in 1958, he opened Frank O’Neill’s Olympic Swimming School on Sydney's North Shore. He also made a fortune building curved pools around the country using an innovative method and material, Spraycrete. His pools would later prove perfect surfaces for skateboards.
In the mid-fifties, by then divorced from Aymon, Pat joined her Cavendish brother Caryll (who had become 7th Lord Waterpark) in Kenya. An admirer gave her a lion cub, Tana, who became the love of Pat's life. At one stage, as well as Tana, she had a cheetah, Joseph her chimp, a baboon, a handful of monkeys, two warthogs, two cranes, ten dogs and various cats.
Rory and Enid came to stay. She, Pat and Joseph shared the same doctor. Enid and Joseph would paint together.
Pat fell in love with the legendary great white hunter, Stan Lawrence Brown, who, as she put it "made his life out of killing animals and I only wanted to save them." And yet their affair was to last until 1968 when (with Tana set free like Joy Adamson's Elsa) she had to move to South Africa to escape the political instability of Kenya and to look after Enid whose rude health was failing. She also had to give Joseph away.
At the bidding of her friend Beryl Markham, who trained her racehorses, Enid bought Broadlands in Somerset West, Cape Province. The old Cape Dutch/English Colonial house would be their last home.
Within a month of each other, both Pat’s ex-husbands asked to remarry her and in 1970, fifteen years after their divorce, at the urging of her mother and brothers, Pat remarried Frank in the Nairobi Registry Office. He had sold his house and his shares in the business and although he regularly visited, an affectionate union endured from afar, he continued to live principally in Sydney.
Pat took over from the feisty Markham and assumed, with remarkable success, the training of Enid’s horses. From Sydney, Frank worked closely with the leading Australian trainer of his generation, TJ Smith, and a succession of brilliant vets. Helen would buy and export the best horses from Australia. Pat became one of South Africa’s leading breeders and trainers. Among their successes were Swan River, Rose Bay, Miss Lindeman and Mexican Summer and she came close to a world record for runners to winners.
From the 1990’s, Pat devoted herself to the care of her animals. By 2003, she was feeding 65 dogs and 14 cats. There were also horses, donkeys, sheep, pigs, goats, ducks, geese, macaws – many wondered in and out of the house.
Enid's mighty, much-sought-after heart gave up in 1973; Rory died in 1985; and Caryll in 2013.
Despite the fact that her fortune was spent and Broadlands sold (she was allowed to remain in the house for life), the inevitable headlines followed ‘Olympic husband disinherited for a chimpanzee’. (According to the Manly Observer, Frank, not Kalu, would eventually inherit some £75,000 from his wife).
Only a month before her death, in 2019, Pat was cleared by Cape Town High Court of responsibility after Kalu had bitten off the index finger of a Broadlands resident as she fed her figs. Six dogs, two of them Great Danes, and two cats continued to share her bed. As the visiting Frank observed, there was no room for him.
By 2008 he and Pat had drifted and he returned to Manly and a girlfriend, Jan Garrett, who loved and cared for him until his death
Frank continued to charm and swim into his nineties - even winning an over-80s relay.
He died in his sleep on 10 July in Manly seven decades after he had swum for his nation in Helsinki. An Olympic flag draped his coffin.
