Ironman World Championship: Two-time champion Tinley appreciates aloha spirit

Editor’s note: This is an essay by two-time Ironman World Champion Scott Tinley in 1999, reflecting on an Ironman career.

Sometime in the late afternoon on Saturday, October 23, 1999, my quest for the perfect suntan ended. My annual working vacation would no longer be available as the perfectly-impulsive excuse of why I can’t pick the kids up from school. That little groove out on the Queen K Highway that I have helped to form would no longer be subject to the friction of my wheels and the pounding of my shoes. I would no longer use the Hawaiian Ironman as my own Rock of Sisyphus, struggling during a full moon to find some meaning in a simple yet emboldenly-athletic competition. It’s over. Pau. Finee’. Check please.

After 20 years of chasing the likes of Dave Scott, Mark Allen, dozens of unnamed German UberKids, say nothing of my own tail, I decided to make that my last Ironman in Kona. I have a hundred reasons why though I can’t think of one right now. I have nothing to run from and nothing to run to.

It’s just time.

When the gun was fired on Saturday morning, I had nothing left to prove to you and nothing left to prove to myself. It was that way in 1981 and will be that way if I can find the vision to return in 2020.

This race has taught me more than I will know. Or more accurately, it has been the vehicle I drove to discover myself. It has reached a point of nearly defining my existence. And that scares me. The event has changed. I have changed. While the match may have burned in sync for many years, I cannot let my concept of self stay tied to any organization, especially one whose movements are not forever tied to my own personal journey.

I used to count the people of World Triathlon Corp as my friends. I am deeply indebted for all they have done. Let’s leave it at that.

THE GOOD OL’ DAYS

I will remember fondly the multitude of good times that came my way in Kona; when there was but one grocery store on the entire West side of the Island and no stoplights at all; when the local sport fishermen felt threatened by these new athletes who swam amongst their boats and took their parking places on the pier. When you could get a condo for a week at the whopping price of $299, car included. When the entire course was open to anyone and it was common to see friends and spouses driving alongside their competitors for miles at a time, turning up the local radio station so they could hear the melodically sweet twang of Polynesian sound.

And I will remember the gradual presence of rules and regulations, the first time hard shell helmets were required and we cut up the plastic strips off our condo’s vertical window blinds and taped them to our leather hair nets, thinking that any one of the local volunteers could be easily fooled. I will remember when a few of us showed up with these top secret aero bars and had the euro-dogs out scrambling to match the position with PVC pipe from the hardware store.

And I will never, ever forget the Aloha spirit blessed upon me by the local residents. Their names and faces are many but the depth of their charity is limitless. It was only yesterday when then Mayor of Kona, Curt Tyler, handed me his own slippers off his feet when the asphalt was hurting my post-race blisters in 1981. And when Dr. Bob Laird treated my 10-day old daughter, Torrie, in 1987 for a serious fever and wouldn’t take a dime in return. When Tracy and Peter Boynton insisted that we stay at their house every year, asking nothing in return. When Karen Davis would pick me up from the airport in her husband’s utility truck with two ice cold Primos. When the late Nick Rott would sit for days at his and his wife’s (Gerry) B and L Bike shop, trying to learn German so he could understand what the foreign athletes were saying about their bikes.

My 20 years at Ironman Kona wasn’t about the race at all. That was a side show to the Ohana.

My time under the Kona sun has provided a few cloudy days as well: Watching the ambulance drive away with the lifeless body of Pat Griskus, cut down in his prime three days before the race by a cement truck in the year of 1987. To this day I think of Pat every time a cement mixer drives past me.

Watching the police arrest a drunken fisherman for piloting his vessel right into the start of the race sometime in the mid-80s. Do you know what it is like to swim two feet away from a 12-inch brass propeller, watching it slice the water like some real life aquatic vego-matic?

My time that I rounded the final corner on Alii Drive in 1983 and seeing Dave Scott just crossing the finish line, 33 seconds ahead and fading fast, thinking that he had held a five minute lead and knowing that I would have to search long and hard to find meaning in this one. I’d caved.

But I did, and that lesson has helped me in any number of other real-world related “never-say-die” applications. Dave’s greatest gift was out-smarting me. And then being graceful about it.

No, the darker moments will not be repressed and forgotten. The utter disgust of watching a pack of lead cyclist come back from Hawi, five minutes ahead and going away, so close to the ABC TV vans they could have combed their hair by looking at the chrome bumper. Having to suppress every emotion I felt for six weeks prior to the race, content to let the world revolve around my preparation. Your Grandma’s going into surgery, your wife is pregnant, the car’s transmission is broken. Damn. Don’t they know it’s Ironman time? Can’t the bank wait until November to get paid? I am the Sun and these distractions are merely planets revolving around me until the full Moon.

And the defeats. At first being so disappointed with second place to “The Man.” And thinking I sucked because I didn’t even finish in the top three. And I’m pretty sure I gave him the moniker in admiration before I knew his greater qualities as a kind and simple man. Trying every training regime known, desperately seeking an extra minute or two in the swim. Refusing to ride any bike that weighed more than 15 pounds. Asking where could I pick up a few seconds, an edge that nobody else had yet. Never considering anything illegal because I wanted to do this for a long time and I wanted to be able to sleep with myself comfortably every one of those nights along the way. And forever after.

Finishing out of the top ten for the first time after 13 years of standing on the stage — how could my fall from grace be so precipitous? Indeed, after my second place finish to Mark in 1990, I was a shiny, cartoon super-hero. One year later, struggling to hang on to my place in history, I began to wonder why I couldn’t be one of the best forever. And I anguished over that cold harsh reality, that as wonderful a place as the finish line in Kona is, I would have to leave it if I wanted it to have any real meaning.

I left. And then the healing began.

LEARNING TO BE HUMBLE

In defeat the heart grows. And humility is the hardest of all human lessons to learn. I remember the exact moment in 1996, 10 miles into the run, suffering ignominiously, when I decided to quit. This just isn’t healthy anymore, I thought. I’m over it. Get me out of this place. So I sat down on the side of the road and waited. And waited. And waited. And finally I stopped a draft marshal on a moped and begged for a ride into town. She dropped me off at the gas station and there stood Dave Scott doing some corny radio show, which he is very good at, and Scott Molina drinking beer, which he is also quite adept at. Dave told me I had done the right thing. Molina told me to go find a camera and take a picture of myself because I would never be that skinny again in my life. Dave was wrong. Scott was right. Mark Allen ran by, leading the race with a mile and a half to go. We tried not to look, not to feel anything. But even the most hardened of egos caves in occasionally. Dave said, “two minutes on the German.” Molina said, “let’s go get another beer.” Both were correct and in every race thereafter my heart would ache but it would grow.

I cannot and will not talk of the pain felt during my 20 years of racing in Kona other than to say it was nearly always substantial. I have listened with equal parts confusion, interest, and rage as former victors have taken to the award’s stage to profess of their perfect race. I have never experienced the phenomena and liken the statement to saying that one had experienced a perfect life.

If you have to ask what I liked best all I can say is that you will find the same answer when you look in the mirror and duplicate the question. The riotous adulation of the final 400 yards down Alii Drive has become more than the rewards of a job well done, it has come to emulate all that appeared good in this sport, all that appeared good in my life. And like a first love, I will remember my virgin trip down that path, dodging traffic, a few aging tourists curiously looking on, wondering why this young blonde kid wore a number on his chest feeling like I was on top of the world. For there is no supplementing the wonder of innocence and naiveté.

But I feel differently now. It was more self-serving than outwardly inspirational. Hell, all I wanted to do was finish the race. Placing third in 1981 had held more unadulterated joy for me than my two subsequent victories and multiple brides’ maid finishes put together.

1981 was the year that changed everything. Now there were expectations, pressure, interviews, professionalism, places to go, people to meet. It was all wide open. I could only believe that the French philosopher Anatole France had been talking to me when he said, “To know is nothing at all. To imagine is everything.” But now I knew what it was like to win, I knew what the rewards both internal and external were. I had had a taste of hero-dom. And once you have taken but one step onto that plane of privileged existence, your life cannot and will not be the same until many years after you have re-emerged back into normalcy.

Victory at the Ironman was like a drug; I had no control over my actions during my annual quest to attain this high. I believe it was and is the same for any man or woman who truly thinks he or she can win. This is not a bad thing for them. But for me now, it was suicidal.

Things change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Each individual associated with the race in any way will have his or her own take on that question, though there is no argument that the race is grossly different than it was 15, 10 or even 5 years ago. It is Big Business. According to an article in the L.A. Times, the annual revenue generated by its associated licensed products is over $160 million (1999). That’s a lot of key fobs and salt shakers with the Ironman logo on it. For an athlete to win the race, their take between prize money, bonuses, appearance fees and future sponsorship opportunity should come close to 6 figures, minus the cost of Ironman logo-ed key fobs for family members. Tell me this carrot is not big enough for an athlete to consider using banned substances, especially when they work and are (mostly) undetectable.

I consider myself very fortunate to have had my time at the top before that insidious problem arose. It doesn’t matter that in all my 20 years, two victories, four second places, a bunch of top ten. I only earned prize money once (1990, I think). My rewards have nothing to do with money. I got my due.

And yes, the race took its share of flesh and blood out of my hide also. When I was diagnosed with an over stressed central nervous system last year, all the docs would say when I asked them why was, “You want answers? Consider the 50 plus Ironman races you have done in your career.”

Sitting on the curb eating Mrs. T’s Pierogies at my last Ironman awards ceremony, my friend Jimmy Riccitello was convinced they were going to give me a car or some gold watch-type retirement gift. I bet him $10 they wouldn’t. “Bro”, I said, “I already got what I came for. I don’t want nor do I expect anything more.” And at the end of the night I was OK. And ten bucks richer.

SLOWER, RICHER LIFE

This is a gift.

I finally had the opportunity to see how the rest of the athletes spend their full moon Saturday in October. That last year after a couple of flat tires (and one spare), I began to slow down — considerably. And I began to notice many things that I had never seen before.

Kids on the side of the road in Hawi picking up water bottles and squirting them at each other, beautiful papaya trees with ripe fruit beckoning me not ten feet from the road and serious hardcore age groupers racing harder than many pros.

I also had the dubious honor of having to rely on another competitor to finish. Martin Snare, wherever you are, thanks for the quikfill when my pump didn’t work. And to the powers that be at WTC, go ahead and disqualify me posthumously for receiving outside aid. I have accepted the offering hand of a brother while I was in need. Of that, I am guilty as I am of letting some small insignificant barb overshadow the countless good karma that has been bestowed upon me.

Please tell Virginia Isbell in registration that I am not “a smart alek who deserves not to get a number.” I am human just as the guy who yanked on my suit at the swim turnaround is. I should’ve been much kinder to the volunteers. I’m sorry.

I doubt that I will come back in future years in other capacities. I say that right now when I need the distance and separation of time. For I cannot imagine myself standing out on Alii Drive, regaling stories of the old days to a group of young Japanese triathletes. I recognize my role and fully expect to give back something. I am just not sure what it is at the moment.