Hey sports fans, here is the latest edition of This Week in Triathlon. This is a special one, because I was afforded the opportunity to question to question an icon of this sport, Scott Tinley. For you youngsters out there, Mr. Tinley is triathlon. You look up the word in the dictionary and his picture is there. He and a couple of his friends/rivals put this sport on the map and on TV. The Big Four: Tinley, Molina, Scott and Allen waged epic battles, and won pretty much everything in the 80′s.

Scott Tinley is the first to respond to my interview request, and that’s ok with me because he is my favorite. Growing up in Illinois, at the same time that surfer dude Tinley was growing up in California, means we had nothing in common. However, watching Ironman on TV and later observing Scott at close range, he struck me as the cool one. The long blond hair, the very 80’s mustache, He was the guy I’d like to hang out with.

Tinley always struck me as the one out of the four that was the natural talent. I imagined that he just showed up on race day and made everyone suffer, but later we all found out that wasn’t the case. I read a story by Scott Molina where he talked about Tinley’s ability to do 20 miler after 20 miler and that they would train three times a day together.

During that time, I was dabbling in triathlon and wearing Tinley racing gear and rising a Centurion Dave Scott Ironman bike. If they did it, I did it. I bought Tinley’s book and adhered to his training schedule. (I also bought Kenny Souza’s “Biathlon Training” book because Du’s were almost as big as Tri’s back then.)

Unfortunately, now none of us can walk. I still plod along hoping that as I age up, I’ll catch the old guys, or maybe they will all quit or die off. It looks like the Big Four have all quit racing triathlons, so I won’t have to worry about Tinley showing up at Vineman next weekend and dominating my age group. His website indicates that he is a top competitor in ocean paddle-boarding. I won’t be challenging him in that arena.

These days, Scott teaches Sport Humanities courses at San Diego State University and writes on the subject. His latest book, Things to Be Survived: Tales of Resolution and Resurrection is a must read. His previous book, Racing to Sunset is a study of athletes and retirement and the broader subject of life’s transitions. I would suggest that Brett Favre and Lance Armstrong pick up a copy.

For the record, Scott won the Ironman World Championship twice and the Ironman World Series three times. He was inducted into the Triathlon Hall of Fame in 1999.

You can learn more about Scott on his website at http://www.scotttinley.com

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10 Questions with Hall of Fame Triathlete Scott Tinley

(10 questions is all you get with a guy this busy)

As I mentioned in the introduction above, if you look up triathlon in the dictionary, you will find a picture of Scott Tinley.  I think you will find that his answers to my pointless questions are thought provoking at the least.  I tried to cover some new ground. The downside of this interveiw is that the professor will probably read my column and give me an incomplete.

(This Week in Triathlon) The “first triathlon” debate will never be won. (Eppies Great Race, July 27th, 1974, cough, cough). Obviously, there was a day when you didn’t know what a triathlon was. After High School What were you up to athletically pre-tri?

(Scott Tinley) Descriptive history allows us to offer a place for both Eppie, the San Diego Track Club, and some eclectic legend about an event in 1921 France . But in the service of common language, I’ll go with San Diego ’s well documented lore.

When I left high school I went to the beach and a great little community college to study art and oceanography and play tennis, all of which hold a special place within me and I basically suck at.

(TWiT) Do you remember what you first response was to the idea of what would become Ironman?

(ST) No one “became an Ironman.” That’s a wonderful Mike Reillyism; a projected identify formation that still confuses me. In the early 80s, it was just a long, strange event that you completed to check that box and return on Monday morning to be at work by nine.

(TWiT) Tell me about your nutrition plan for that first “World Championship”?

(ST) Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Gookinaide, bananas, and “god please don’t let me barf this stuff up.”

(TWiT) Which is tougher, running the Queen K in October of grading essay exams?

(ST) Ah. The difference is that one is allowed to alter their environment in the process and the in the other, they are altered by the environment itself.

(TWiT) Performance Enhancing Drug abuse in sport is an unfortunate part of the 21st century. Is it just something we are going to have to accept or something we can eliminate.

(ST) It’s a matter of changing societal tastes, distinctions, and denying so much moral relativism. We are a country who loves its drugs. Change our tastes, tolerances, and patterns of consumption and both PEDs and the ridiculous “war or drugs” go away.

Reduce demand, reduce the importance of winning and see us move closer to what most of us want but can seem to identify or find.

(TWiT) (this is topic of discussion among several current pros) Do you think professional athletes should be required to pay for their doping tests, or should the organizing body or promoter cover these costs.

(ST) Let the pros decide. If they want a fair competition then let them hire, manage, and control all the elements of legislation. It’s an implausible suggestion though…pro athletes are entertainers and exist in a mostly for-profit structure whose motive and ideologies are not always in sync with theirs.

(TWiT) Did you ever compete in a “draft legal” race? What are your feelings on the sport as defined by ITU?

(ST) A few times. I was amused by it. Certainly it didn’t feel like the sport that I had grown up with and did not reflect the ideals of its founders. I feel that the entire notion of drafting was forced on the pros in a very coercive, deceptive, and amoral fashion by ITU officials. We were told that the media and the IOC and USOC “insisted on the format to make it exciting and to eliminate the lack of clarity in drafting calls.” In the last 20 years I have interviewed most of the people in the media whose names were cited and almost to a one they deny that claim.

(TWiT) It’s 2010 and you are 25 years old. Do you take up the sport?

(ST) No, I’d stay in school, get my grad degrees early, a good job in academia, and then retire at 55 with good hips and knees and take up triathlon.

(TWiT) Molina, Allen, Scott, you. Who would the smart money be on in a fight circa 1980? 2010?

(ST) Dean Harper or maybe Heather Fuhr.

(TWiT) When I write the book, Scott Tinley, The Untold Story, what is the one thing you want to be known for?

(ST) I’m guilty. But I wouldn’t change anything.