You are here

June 2014

Choice Cuts -- Classic Triathlon Video on the Web

Sunday, June 22, 2014

As the shadow of triathlon's history grows, we've noticed the platforms of nostalgia expanding in sync. One of the more fascinating effects of the sport's growth is the recent explosion of race coverage from the 80s and 90s uploaded to sites like YouTube and Vimeo. With a double click you can be sent back to the days of leather seats, leather hair-net helmets, and leather strapped pedals. Every week new clips exhumed from VHS, Beta, Super-8 and 16 mm film are digitized and published for our benefit. Listed below are a few of our favs.

My Back Pages: Origins of Speech in Triathlete Magazine

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

In the fall of 1983, Tri-Athlete magazine (later Triathlete) founder, William R. Katovsky came to Ocean Beach, California and sat at my chipped dining room table. We had coffee and Raisin Bran and considered each other like two junkyard dogs. Katovsky was a pimply-faced political Jew from Berkeley who carried a sense of entitlement under his curly black hair. His glasses were held together with a paper clip.

My Journey From Ironman To Triathlete

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

What? That title is probably going to seem backwards to most of you. Actually, the title should read, "My Journey from Swimmer to Ironman to Triathlete," but more on that in a moment. In the early days of the sport, there really weren't a lot of races. So, you didn't become a triathlete by first competing in, perhaps, a sprint and then an Olympic-distance, followed by a 70.3, and then, finally, maybe after several years or more in the sport, an Ironman. No, you competed almost immediately in the Ironman. And, not just any Ironman, but the Hawaii Ironman, which was the only Ironman around.