Close to shore, crosscurrents sweep the athletes sideways, first to the left, then to the right, then left again. The surface is placid closer to the beach, but the swimmers face gently rolling swells once they pass beyond the protection of the pier. Some years are rougher than others. This year the sea is virtually a mirror.
At the tip of the still-lengthening teardrop of swimmers, having taken no time to separate themselves from the rest, are Rob Mackle, no longer scared now that he’s moving, and Wolfgang Dittrich, a West German who qualified for his country’s Olympic trials in swimming in 1984 and who posted the fastest swim time of the day in his first Ironman in 1987. Rob and Wolfgang know each other from the pool at the University of California–San Diego, where Rob does most of his swimming and where Wolfgang swims when he’s in town. Knowing they have no other match in the water, they talked before the race about cooperating to ensure that one or the other of them earns the $1,500 swim prime awarded to the first racer out of the water, and they started the race side by side to facilitate that cooperation. Now they are well clear of the rest of the field less than half a mile into the race. Wolfgang is the stronger man today, and Rob follows in his wake. A race staffer paddling a kayak pilots Wolfgang along an arrow-straight line just to the left of the orange guide buoys toward the Captain Beans, a party boat anchored at the turnaround, sparing him the chore of sighting.
The two men are in a class by themselves, churning through the water at a steady sixty-eight seconds per 100 yards, faster than most serious recreational swimmers can sprint 100 yards in a pool. Their strokes are beautiful to behold. The arms cycle with perfect left-right symmetry and in metronomic rhythm. A relaxed scissoring of the legs is exquisitely syncopated with the churning arms, which contort underwater to form stiff paddles that create tremendous thrusting pressure—as if they are grabbing invisible rungs and yanking their bodies forward. They slice so swiftly through the water that a bow wave is visible at the crown of each man’s head.
Their gap on Dave and the other top contenders grows from ten seconds to twenty, from thirty seconds to a minute, and beyond. Long gone are the days when Dave could post the fastest split times in all three legs of Ironman. The sport has grown, drawing in swimmers of a caliber that Dave and Mark never had to face at their NAIA and NCAA Division III universities.
Rob’s and Wolfgang’s strategy in relation to the rest of the field is similar to Dave’s in relation to Mark. To gain as much distance as possible. To inflict suffering. To make their competitors second-guess themselves and possibly even give up.
Both men are strong cyclists too. If they can build a big enough gap on the very best cyclists in the race—beginning with Dave and Mark—by the end of the swim, they can keep the race interesting in an unexpected way for hours to come.
Swimming all alone in third place, in an undesirable no-man’s-land, is Bill Penn, a 37-year-old age grouper from Olympia, Washington, who is not a strong cyclist or runner and will fade to 474th place before he reaches the finish line. Nine years from now, after completing Ironman Canada, Bill will announce, “An Ironman is just too long to race,” and quit the pursuit, wishing he’d figured it out sooner.
Next behind Bill is Patrick Bateman, former star swimmer of the Roanoke Valley Aquatic Association and a legitimate top-twenty contender in today’s race. Chasing him is Chris Hinshaw, who had his finest Ironman moment in the 1985 boycott year, when he finished second behind Scott Tinley, and is racing on tired legs after taking second place behind Ray Browning at Ironman Canada just a few weeks ago.
Right on Chris’s heels and using 15 percent less energy to swim the same speed, thanks to the draft effect, is West German pro Joachim Zemke. A frustrating ten or twelve seconds adrift of Joachim is Kentuckian Don Livingston, another age grouper who has managed to swim his way through most of the pros toward the front of the race but who will see most of those same pros reclaim their positions on the bike.
Then comes the first big pack, containing more than a dozen athletes, including most of the real contenders, and headed by Dave Scott, who much prefers the psychological control of pulling others to the physiological advantage of letting others pull him. Mark Allen is equally comfortable leading and chasing, but in this race he sees every advantage in shadowing Dave. Approaching the midpoint of the swim, Grip remains close enough to touch his rival. Dave’s effort to shake him has failed, and he knows it has failed because once every minute or so Mark slaps Dave’s foot to let him know he’s still there.
It is normal for some accidental slapping to occur when one swimmer drafts off another, but after a couple of slaps a chaser following race etiquette will slip a few inches farther back to prevent additional violence without losing the advantage of the slipstream. But the slapping now continues, as it did throughout the swim in the 1987 Ironman. Dave feels strongly tempted to flip onto his back and glare at Mark, reenacting his response of two years ago, but decides against it, remembering how little difference it made then.
Instead he tries something else. Each time Dave feels another slap, he kicks violently in the hope of striking a painful counterblow. That doesn’t work very well either, but in any case Mark is not taking Dave out of his game by pissing him off. The angrier Dave gets, the faster he goes.
On shore, nobody has any idea what’s happening. The cannon fired, the athletes swam away, and now the spectators wait. Mike Plant puts the rock ’n’ roll back on to keep the energy from flagging and finds a remarkable number of things to talk about. He plugs sponsors, reviews some of the race’s top story lines, and passes on what little real information about the progress of the swim he can get, which comes from an ABC camera crew on a small boat and a race official on the Captain Beans who notes race numbers as the athletes come around and reports them back to shore. In the fifty minutes it takes the big names to complete the swim, Mike will be able to tell the crowd little more than that Wolfgang Dittrich and Rob Mackle have a huge lead; Dave and Mark and several other top competitors are in the lead chase pack; and Wendy Ingraham is the top woman, only seconds behind Dave’s group.
Bob Babbitt watches the swim from the pier with Ironman elite athlete liaison Bob Bright.
“What does Mark have to do to win?” Babbitt asks Bright, not so much in his editor’s capacity as out of pure curiosity.
“He’s got to do what’s been most difficult for him,” Bright says. “He’s got to get off the bike alongside Dave Scott and then run with him all the way. Breathe on him, bump him, maybe spit on him. But stay off the front. He can’t do anything flamboyant.”
Mark has gotten a good start on the bumping part.
WOLFGANG DITTRICH and Rob Mackle have made the turn and are now swimming back toward shore, still guided by the lead kayak. Their lead over Dave’s pack has ballooned to nearly two minutes. Dave is accustomed to losing no more than a few seconds to the swim leader. He’ll have something else to stoke his rage when he completes the swim and finds out how far behind he is—not that it matters as long as Mark is behind him.
On shore, Charlie Graves and Brian Hughes, who have been joined by Mike Rubano and Brian’s friend John Martin, watch the approaching disturbance of the water in a state of mild apprehension, as do Space and Toot, separately, and Sharon Allen, alone. It is said that you can’t win Ironman in the swim, but you can lose it. Mark Allen’s supporters will be able to relax just a bit when they see that he has not lost the race in the swim. Then they can begin to worry about broken derailleurs, nosebleeds, and flat tires on the bike.
Dave Scott’s circle looks on as a single group. Pat Feeney squints into the watery distance with particular purpose, looking for the Man’s distinctive stroke pattern and well able to spot it 100 yards out. This ability says as much about Dave’s freestyle technique as it does about Pat’s knowledge of Dave, who is a violent swimmer, and especially violent for such a good swimmer. Freestyle swimming is a technique-dependent discipline, and generally there is a strong correlation between gracefulness of movem
ent and speed in the water. But Dave muscles through the sea, seeming to overcome inefficiency through sheer will. He whips his arm out to the side in the recovery phase of the stroke instead of coming over the top, and he slaps the surface of the water with his hand at the entry point of the stroke instead of piercing it with his fingertips, creating a splash that is visible at some distance.
Pat is not surprised to find that Dave’s ugly stroke is missing from the lead pair of swimmers now discernible in the distance. But he is momentarily troubled by the vastness of the gap between this pair and the splashing of the first chase pack, in which he trusts he will eventually spot Dave’s stroke. Then he remembers that all that really matters is Mark’s position relative to Dave.
The leaders raise their heads to check on their progress toward shore every four to eight strokes. At first the beach doesn’t seem to get any closer. But, almost imperceptibly, the big banyan tree in front of the King Kam grows taller, and mashed-together flecks of color on the pier separate into individual people. Then, suddenly, they hear Mike Plant’s voice drifting across the water, and the sound affects them as the ringing of the bell at the start of the last lap affects track runners. The lead kayaker peels off. Wolfgang begins a final surge. Rob swings out to the right and commits the full capacity of his considerable musculature to stealing the swim prime from Wolfgang in the literal last minute. The German sees him sneaking up on his right shoulder and finds just enough extra power to hold him off through the final strokes.
The swim exit is a boat-launch ramp on the north side of the pier—the side opposite the starting line. Wolfgang continues swimming until his hand touches the ramp, as he can swim much faster than he can run in water that is more than knee deep. He rises somewhat dizzily and comes out of the ocean in three big bounds. Rob is on him like a knapsack. The official swim course finish line is located at the top of the ramp. Wolfgang reaches it at 48:13, the second-fastest time ever. Rob crosses the line eighttenths of a second later. This is going to be no ordinary Ironman.
Mark’s brother Gary stands on the pier next to Mark’s bike, waiting to hand it to him when he arrives. As Wolfgang and Rob charge into the transition area, Gary hears a loud pop! followed by a menacing hissssss. He wheels around and sees that the front tire of Mark’s bike has spontaneously burst.
“Oh, shit!” he shouts.
Every once in a while the warming atmosphere on race morning causes the highly pressurized air inside a tire to expand just enough to blow a tube on a waiting bike in the transition area. It’s just the kind of rare disaster that commonly befalls Mark at Ironman. With a stab of panic Gary realizes he has about two minutes to flawlessly change the flat, or else Mark will have to stand around and wait for his bike while Dave gets away. Two minutes is about the minimum amount of time it takes an experienced wrench to change a flat bike tire even without the incredible pressure under which Gary must now change this one. He frantically removes the wheel from the front fork and kneads the tire with both hands like a masseuse to break up the glue seal between tire and wheel rim. His palms are wet with panic sweat, and it seems to take forever. With a single violent yank he rips the blown tire off the rim and grabs one of Mark’s two spares off the back of the saddle, leaving him with only one. As he fits the fresh tire onto the wheel, other swimmers begin to trickle in, increasing Gary’s heart-gripping sense of urgency.
Bill Penn charges up the ramp with his arms upraised, contracting his chest muscles and biceps like a steroid-addled bodybuilder and screaming like a man being eaten alive by a grizzly bear. He has completely lost his mind to his five seconds of fame. That’s just as well, given what the next ten hours hold in store for him.
As Dave’s pack approaches the shore, more than a dozen men fight for position in the final sprint. Dave puts everything he has into a late effort to separate himself from Mark, if only by a few seconds, but because of the drafting advantage it’s just not possible. Jeff Cuddeback, a 31-year-old pro from Florida, and Dirk Aschmoneit, yet another West German, show the best closing speed and hit the ramp at the vanguard of the group.
Dave bursts out of the water in eleventh place overall. Just behind him is his old water polo teammate Mark Roberts, who was able to hold on to the lead pack the whole way and squeeze between Mark Allen and Dave in the mad dash for the finish. Roberts does not know it’s Dave he shadows until his old friend, flailing like a bleeding one-ton bull amid a pack of wispy matadors, smacks him full force in the cheek with an errant elbow.
Holy shit: That’s Dave Scott’s elbow! Roberts realizes, having taken more elbows to the face from Dave than he can remember back in their water polo days. He would know that blow anywhere. Roberts is briefly stunned but manages to keep his feet and quickly regains his forward momentum.
He is fortunate. The accidental hit could have fractured his cheekbone and taken him out of the race. Mark Allen too is lucky, although he doesn’t know it. His brother has managed to stretch a new tire around the front wheel, inflate it with a couple of dozen ferocious pumps, and lock the wheel back in place between the blades of the front fork just as Mark scuttles up the swim exit ramp one step behind Dave. For a moment it seemed as if Madam Pele had defeated Mark yet again.
Dave Scott and Mark Allen have completed the swim, and neither man has lost the race, although both came close—Dave with his late start and Mark with his blown tire. Dave’s official time is 51:17; Mark’s, 51:18. They have been separated by no more than a body length since the cannon fired.
CHAPTER 9
BURNING MATCHES
Invincibility lies in the defense; the possibility of victory in the attack.
—SUN TZU, THE ART OF WAR
Dave Scott launches out of the ocean, tearing the swim cap and goggles off his head and casting them aside in the water to save the single second it would take him to remove his headgear in the transition area. He scampers up the swim exit ramp on the balls of his bare feet, loosening the tie on his swim brief to save the two seconds it would take him to do so in transition. Hands free, Dave needlessly brushes away the race officials and spectators who form a tunnel of noise along a narrow, fenced-off gangway and hurries ahead onto the pier. Mark Allen is right behind him.
Neither man pauses under the makeshift freshwater shower that has been set up at the entrance to the transition area for their comfort and convenience. Instead they charge straight through and into a space containing row upon row of plastic transition bags marked with race numbers hanging from long metal racks. Grabbing their bags on the fly, they enter a semi-private changing area where, in company with others from their swim pack, they pull off their swim briefs and suit up in cycling clothes. Dave’s kit is white and lime. Mark dons a white jersey with rainbow striping and black shorts. Dave gets his wardrobe together first and mounts his bike before Mark, who loses five seconds fastening a heart rate monitor strap around his chest. Mark receives his bike from Gary—flushed and sweaty from his just-completed tire repair—and throws a leg over the machine, one eye on what he’s doing and the other on Dave, who’s now pedaling away ahead of him.
The Ironman bike course begins, as it should in the world’s toughest triathlon, with a grueling hill climb: notorious Pay-’n’-Save Hill. The transition area spits the athletes onto Ali’i Drive just at the point where it bends away from the coast and heads inland—which on the Big Island, as on most islands, means up—becoming Palani Road. From the perspective of cyclists at its base, the road looks something like a three-quarters-of-a-mile-long, 300-foot-high water slide, forming three distinct undulations as it drops steeply from the top at its intersection with the Queen K highway, levels out briefly at the traffic light that allows access to the Pay-’n’-Save supermarket on the north side and to another shopping center standing opposite, tilts downward again to the intersection at Kuakini Highway, and there flattens again briefly before dropping once more toward the King Kam and the pier.
Dave Scott scorches up the hill, face ugly with exertion, bouncing o
n his pedals, leaning far over the handlebar like a ski jumper over his skis and rocking his bike from side to side to squeeze out that extra dram of power. His strategy here, already evident, is the same as it was in the swim: to start hard enough to make Mark feel real discomfort and perhaps second-guess his own strategy of shadowing Dave regardless of what Dave does. To send a message: So, you’re going to let me dictate the pace, Mark? Okay, then, how about this pace?
Before the race Dave told Pat Feeney that when he started the bike leg, he would pretend it was not 112 miles long but only 25 miles, the standard USTS distance, and would ride the first 20 miles at his usual short-course speed. Dave knows that he has only a couple of speeds, so the plan’s not quite as crazy as it would be for another athlete. But still, it’s a gamble.
And it works rather well, initially, as Mark, in his urgency to check Dave’s escape, struggles to get his feet into his bike shoes, which, unlike Dave, he preclipped onto his pedals so that he wouldn’t have to run from the changing room to his bike in the shoes—always an awkward maneuver given the clunky knob under the ball of the foot. Mark loses precious starting momentum in the first segment of the climb as he fumbles with his footwear. Strapped in at last, he stands on his pedals and launches into a full sprint, holding nothing back in his effort to shrink Dave’s dangerous early advantage. Just ahead of him Ken Glah does the same. Ken knows as well as Mark that at Ironman, the race is wherever Dave Scott is—so he’s damned if he’s going to let Dave get away.
A scene of awful carnage plays out on Pay-’n’-Save Hill as several members of the lead swim pack fail to maintain contact with Dave in his rocketing ascent. Some of the greatest long-distance triathletes in the world are among the casualties, including three-time European champion (and one of Mark’s New Zealand training partners) Rob Barel of the Netherlands and recent Ironman Canada winner Ray Browning. A few of them judge Dave’s speed suicidal, for themselves if not for him, and willingly let him go. Others try to stay with him but can’t. All of them know they’re watching any hope they had of winning disappear up the road with Dave, who, judging by precedent, will not be caught from behind later in the day.
Iron War Page 21