What Was Triathlon Like 40 Years Ago? – Triathlete – Triathlete
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Triathlon of 40 years ago looks the same – swim, bike, run – but a lot has changed. Photo: Tony Duffy/Allsport, Mike Plant, Susan Debra Windmiller/Fairfax Media
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At its core, triathlon has remained unchanged through the years – it's still a swim, bike, and run. But not everything has stayed the same – there have been massive changes to fueling, training, gear, and technology since tri's earliest iterations in the 1980s. It's easy to romanticize the “good old days” of triathlon, and there certainly is a lot to love – but not everything was lovely. From on-course weigh-ins to swimming without wetsuits (which hadn't yet been invented) OG triathletes just did things differently.
Despite the sport’s evolution over the years, one theme has remained the same, says triathlon historian Bob Babbitt, founder of the Challenged Athletes Foundation and host of the beloved Breakfast with Bob series, who has covered the sport for decades: “From the start, our sport has showcased the pursuit of the impossible becoming possible. The endless inspiration of those who use the sport to break boundaries has never changed.”
Here’s a look at the vibe of triathlon back in the day.
To qualify for the 2024 Ironman World Championship race, you have to do an actual Ironman first. But back in the early to mid-1980s, an Olympic-distance finish could suffice.
“[Short-course events] like the Boulder Peak and Memphis in May would purchase a bunch of Kona slots, like 30 to 50 of them, and offer them as an incentive to do these local races,” says Barry Siff, the former president of USA Triathlon who once owned the Boulder Peak Tri and himself earned his first Kona qualification (KQ) at the Whiskey Dick triathlon in Washington. “So you got a lot of folks showing up to Hawaii having never done close to the distance and totally unfamiliar with the course. That was…interesting. But most of us got through.”
Cut-off times? What are those? In the earliest iterations of Ironman, there were no time limits—and some participants took full advantage of that lack of urgency. “We operated on a much more leisurely pace,” says Babbitt, who showed up for the 1980 Hawaii Ironman with a sleeping bag, assuming he’d have two days to complete the race. “I got a full-body massage between the bike and the run that took at least 45 minutes. I wasn’t in a rush.”
Babbitt also shared a story about one of his competitors ordering a catered meal served “on a table with a tablecloth” during the bike leg, while another stopped to eat at a diner. “It was just about finishing in whatever way and however long,” Babbitt says.
Despite the laissez-faire attitude towards most of the competition, there was some semblance of science in play, or at least an awareness of it, with officials mandating weigh stations in the early 1980s.
“If any competitor lost 10% of their body weight during the race, they’d pull them off the course,” Babbitt says. All athletes would be weighed prior to racing, and then a few times throughout, hopping on doctor’s office scales. “I actually had the opposite problem and gained weight since I was eating Hawaiian sweet bread rolls and chugging Gatorade the whole time,” Babbitt says with a laugh.
By the 1990s, lightweight racing bikes and aerobars were standard equipment in triathlon. Before then? Anything but.
“Basically, if it had wheels, you could ride it,” Babbitt says. “One year, my buddy showed up to the race with this old clunker with a kickstand. The officials asked him to take off the kickstand, which he did, but the tires were too thick to fit in the racks, so they put the kickstand back on so it could stand in transition.”
Other accessories of the day: Excessively large brake levers, external press-in headset, and a vertical water bottle carrier between the aerobars. Siff recalls the “revolutionary” impact of the Scott DH handlebars, which he first saw pop up in the mid-to-late 1980s. (In 1985, American pro Scott Tinley affixed a set of dropped cowhorn-style bars to his carbon-fiber Peugeot and broke the bike course record by five minutes.) But the bars were mostly seen among the pros.
“They were hard to get, so they separated the haves from the have-nots, and the cool kids from the rest of us,” Siff says. “We all wanted them, and eventually, we all got them.”
Before there were tri-specific wetsuits, there were, well, Speedos—and that’s about it. Many hearty triathletes in the 1980s braved chilly water and swam, biked, and ran in the same single swimsuit without any wardrobe changes (although, for Ironman, some opted to throw on shorts for the run, like 1985 World Champ Joanne Ernst).
That all changed in 1987, when entrepreneur and Quintana Roo founder Dan Empfeld designed the first triathlon-specific wetsuit, aiming to offer buoyancy, warmth, and ease of motion. Empfield’s design was extremely well-received and sales soared—not only among pro athletes, but among age-groupers. And, in turn, the wetsuit increased triathlon participation, as it offered those new to the sport and an added layer of protection and safety in the open water.
Personal coaching with hyper-individualized triathlon training plans are ubiquitous in the sport these days. But in the wild west of the 1980s, you either totally winged your training or looked at those who had done it already.
“Dave Scott’s Triathlon Training book was my bible,” Siff says, of the training guide published by Scott in 1986 (after he’d already won four of his six world championship titles). “There weren’t coaches like you see now, not at all. We had books and articles and most of us were self-coached” Siff says.
Before sports nutrition became the billion dollar industry that it is today (and before sports gels emerged on the scene in the 1990s,), endurance athletes fueled with whatever they could.
“The standard go-to was to cut up pieces of Powerbar and stick them to your top tube and just drink water,” Siff says.
Some would stuff bananas and oranges in their bike jerseys and snack on them throughout the race, while others, like Babbitt, opted for decidedly less healthy grab-and-go options. “At mile 80 on the bike, my crew gave me a root-beer snow cone,” he says. “And that was after I’d had a Big Mac and a coke at some point. We just had no idea.”
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Since it first began offering prize money in 1986, the Ironman World Championship has distributed equally to pro men and women. In 1989, after efforts for change led by pro athlete Erin Baker, the International Triathlon Union (now World Triathlon) followed suit, making triathlon one of a handful of sports to offer equal prize money for professional competitors.
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