Dave Scott

“So often what motivated me to go back every year to the October IRONMAN World Championship in Kona was my performance from the previous year. A great race always fueled me with a positive energy and motivation. But the years that strayed far from my ideal plan were even more of a spark that fueled my commitment. That was absolutely the case going into 1989 and the eventual race that became one of the hallmark moments in IRONMAN history. 

To understand the dynamics of that race in 1989, I need to first take you back to the previous year of 1988. I was fully committed to racing in Kona that season. I was going into the race as the defending champion after winning my 6th title in 1987 and was ready to defend it one more time. People often think that defending my title should have been easy for me.

The impression back then was that it would just be a matter of me pulling up the winning formula and doing it one more time. 

Unfortunately, even with my experience, I found myself dealing with an injury that had haunted me off and on for years and was always in the back of my mind. In 1988, that injury became a big worry. In June, my left knee started to develop a patella problem. Training was hit-or-miss on any given day. But the truly oppressive element was the mental burden that accompanied the acute pain I felt when I ran. 

The run was my weapon of choice in Kona. So, doing very little run training as a result of my injury was not ideal for me, physically or mentally. But I was trying to hold onto the hope that the knee would come around by race day—I’d been in this exact situation before.

In 1982, my ability to run came to a screeching halt three weeks prior to the race in Kona. I was hampered with a niggling knee issue and was questioning whether I could race. The morning of my departure to Kona, I got up at 3:00am and told myself if I could run four miles with minimal knee pain I would race. 

I stepped out the door—

—and, thankfully, I made it through that test. 

I got on the plane to Kona feeling relief knowing I would at least be able to make it through the race. But I still had this nagging pull in the back of my mind that the three weeks of missed run training could be enough to cost me the victory. 

That feeling proved to be right. Scott Tinley won that February. 

Back to 1988: my knee continued to be painful on my daily runs in Kona during race week. The Friday before the race, I ran in the morning and the pain was still present. Sometime after 7:00pm that night, I decided to give it one final test—hoping for the same outcome as 1982. 

Running down Alii Drive, I had covered less than a half mile when I had no choice but to face the truth: the pain was intense. 

I was crushed. The race was not going to happen for me. I would not defend my title. 

I walked back to my condo, shoulders slumped, knowing that a year of preparation was over and the reward at the end of my training wouldn’t be coming. 

Disappointed and disillusioned, I spent race day in one of the television crew vans alongside the reporters and camera operators. This was not the view of the race I had ever wanted to see. Each painful second I sat there watching the other guys race, I knew it was an opportunity lost. Athletically, you don’t get an infinite number of moments to be at your peak. And one of mine had just evaporated.

But the one persistent thought that was clear, even there in that van, was my decision to come back and race in ’89. That thought cemented my entire being that day, and in the many days to come. There was absolutely no question—I would be back.”

I got three flats during the bike segment (which, by the way, were the only three flats I ever experienced in all my years of training and racing in Kona). I finished in 5th, farther out of the lead than any of my six starts on the Big Island. 

I was devastated. Even without Dave Scott, I couldn’t win. 

Deep down, I knew what my problem was. I was fragile. I was intimidated by Dave and by the race. When I hit the inevitable low patches every IRONMAN has, I always broke mentally. I’d sink into doubt and become physically weak. In contrast, it seemed to me that Dave flourished in those same situations—and that made my fear of him and the race even worse.

I lacked the self-confidence to stay in the thick of the competition all the way to the point where the other guys would break rather than me. My big leads ended up in complete disaster. When you are walking on the marathon and the rest of the field is running, there isn’t a buffer big enough for you to end up the victor. The IRONMAN World Championship has never been won by someone who walked the closing miles of the marathon.

As 1988 ended, I knew I had to decide my plan for 1989 by the first of the year. I kept waiting for a good reason to go back to Kona. But nothing came to me. My experiences up to that point? I’d raced really hard and blown up. I’d raced conservatively and never been in the hunt for the crown. I couldn’t see how to go hard enough to be a true contender without it being so hard that it ended in disaster. And if I backed my pace off to the point where I was confident I wouldn’t explode, the field would just pull away from me.

So, I made my decision: no Kona. I was done with it. I’d won just about every other race I’d entered and beaten every single top athlete in the world, including Dave Scott.  I’d leave Kona for Dave Scott and everyone else. 

As my first days of training approached for the 1989 season, I retreated into a race schedule that was a kind of safe haven. Dave could have Kona.”

Dave Scott

“My internal drive and focus were never to beat my competitors. For me, it was simply about pushing myself to my ultimate capacity and potential. This was true for both racing and training. But I always felt misunderstood on this level.  

The media and my fellow competitors thought I was this ruthless competitor, which on some level was accurate, but I knew it was about overcoming something much deeper within myself. I wrestled with depression, and at the root of the emotional roller coaster was my setting of unattainable goals. I had these conflicting goals swirling in my head every year during the fall and winter months: training at a level above anyone else, maintaining harmony in my marriage, and dealing with sponsor demands. There was no way to simultaneously uphold my unrealistic standards in all three of these areas. The weight of all those expectations would send me into a spiral downhill that counseling never helped. 

In my experience, the single denominator to upend my decline had always been taxing myself physically and mentally preparing for the next IRONMAN. In truth, my career as a triathlete had nothing to do with anyone else despite what it looked like on the outside.

Training for Kona was physical brutal, but when my training for the event was on the upswing, my mind flowed emotionally. My hometown of Davis, California, made for a great replica of the harsh conditions of Hawaii. Davis was hot and very windy. That, plus the solitude of the training mentally prepared me for any and all conditions at the IRONMAN. I trained alone about 95% of the time. That forced me to build an internal mental focus and strength when facing the elements and the magnitude of my training. I couldn’t rely on others for the development of my discipline. Not relying on external training partners was one of my keys to being able to have great races in Hawaii. 

Training alone also gave me a deep and permeating sense of inner confidence. I loved my family and friends and thought of them a lot in every race. But I also knew that no matter how tough a race became I would be able to find the deep resonating platform to stand on that came from inside my core being. The Kona course was the perfect place to test myself and my mental perseverance and to bring all that physical and mental preparation out in an amazing and likely unpredictable way. 

While seated on the sidelines in that ABC van in 1988, my decision to race in ‘89 was solidified. And, as I watched my competitors race by, my eyes were always on one man: Mark Allen. Even though I had already beat him multiple times in Kona, I never felt that he realized or recognized his potential. We had raced numerous times since 1982 and Mark’s mastery of triathlon resonated above all the other competitors I had encountered—except in this particular race. 

Despite not having his best race in ’88, I had a quiet premonition that Mark and I would have an incredible battle in 1989. After six races at the World Championships, Mark’s level of frustration was only going to be heightened—he would be going back to the drawing board to plan his renewed assault in Kona. And I would be his target.”

Mark Allen

“Deciding I would not go back to the IRONMAN in 1989 set me free. I knew how to manage myself at the Nice International Triathlon in France. I’d go back there again in 1989 and make that a focus of my season. Nice had become a place where I was comfortable and I felt at home. I knew I would find my strength and come up with the best racing I could. I’d been there five years and won five of those races…undefeated. Kona was not one of those places! 

I would be trying to qualify for the first ever ITU Olympic Distance World Championships in Avignon, France. That excited me. And I could do it all without Kona lurking in the recesses of my consciousness. 

Or so I thought.

On one of my first training runs early that winter of 1989, I felt a surge of unexpected thoughts moving through me. They were my memories from Kona calling me back, but for different reasons than to just race. 

The thoughts came to me in a way that was so completely opposite of how I felt when I landed in Kona and had the IRONMAN staring me down. I was on a run loop in my winter training grounds north of San Diego along a beautiful stretch of ocean lagoon. I always felt strong there. In Kona, I struggled to feel even the smallest shred of self-confidence, but I felt quiet and confident on this sacred stretch of sandy trail near my home. 

Two feelings came to me that day in a lightbulb moment:

I realized that when I was in Hawaii there were parts of the race that were just like my local lagoon trail. And I realized that going for my best was a worthwhile goal no matter how any day turned out. 

Those realizations from Hawaii got louder with each step on that run. And they were telling me to look for a different focus for my racing.

“Stop trying to win. Start trying to bring out what is perfect in you.”

Those whispers from the Island changed everything. That was it! I’d always been racing with someone else’s vision: “Win at all costs. Be the best in the world.” 

Was winning the only thing worthy of the effort it took to go back to Kona? Was second place a loss? Was winning the only goal worth pursuing? And if that was the goal, did I really need to do it in the same way that Dave was able to win?

I had been looking at what Dave Scott seemed to embody in Kona, and had been trying to copy that. He was a warrior who knew each and every square inch of a vast battlefield. He knew where the landmines and dead ends were that could end in defeat. I had wanted to be like that. 

But I didn’t have the same skill set as Dave. As an athlete, he was a tactician. I was an athlete that thrived on exploiting unexpected moments. He was a planner. I was a responder. He had a way to match the strength of the Big Island and exploit it to the limit. I had a more gentle way of nudging life into place, and that seemed to be in stark contrast to Dave’s more aggressive way of becoming a champion. 

But I couldn’t be any of those things, even if it meant that being myself would never lead to victory. Or, perhaps, I had never truly tried being myself? The truth became clear: trying to win by utilizing Dave’s template would always defeat me.

Suddenly, the reasons everyone else had for me to race became irrelevant. It wasn’t about competing against others. It wasn’t about how others saw me or how they thought of me. The IRONMAN was calling me back to race for my own reasons. 

“Bring out your best even with the fears. Stay locked into perfect execution, even if someone else is ahead. Don’t worry about how strong your competitors might be. Stay locked into your perfect race, even if someone else is going to leave the island with the crown.”

Dave Scott never had an inkling of this struggle I had. All he knew was that I had some flat tires in 1988, and then he heard I would be on the start line in 1989. He never knew I had written off IRONMAN in 1989. He, with his steely resolve to always set the record straight about his years that didn’t go as planned, had no idea I’d started 1989 with zero plan to go back to Kona. 

But I would go back. I would race again.”