THE FIRST HI TRI
Judy and John Collins are the Founders of The Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon in Honolulu Hawai’i in 1978. It was the first triathlon in Hawai’i and the first endurance triathlon in the world. Here is what Judy recalls about the night they made their decision. It was a Monday night, a work-day evening.
On 14 Feb 1977 Judy MacGregor Collins made a pledge that she and John Fletcher Collins would introduce triathlon to Hawai’i in February 1978. It would be an endurance event that would use a bike leg to link the Waikiki Roughwater Swim course with the course of the Honolulu Marathon. Judy had been mapping out triathlon courses in her head since the Collins family had done a 10-leg, 10 mile, run-bike-swim event in California in 1974. It was called the Mission Bay Triathlon. The family were fans of the endurance events that were popular on the mainland. This was their chance to create an endurance event that suited their location on a scenic tropical island.
John did not know what Judy was thinking when they left home that night. Judy and John were in charge of the 1977 Sprint Run-Swim that was now 12 days away. Judy and John did better at distance events than short fast sprints. Judy did not want the two of them to be in charge of the Run-Swim again in 1978.
Judy and John were on their way to the awards ceremony for the annual 140 mile O’ahu Perimeter Relays. Judy would accept the awards for the Waikiki Swim Club (WSC) Wahines; John for the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard (PHNSY) Yardbirds. Each was a Captain of a Relay Team that year. They sat outside with their running relay teammates that night. They were in separate conversations.
Judy spelled out her Roughwater and Marathon triathlon plan to friends. What would be a good course for the bike leg? John remembers talking that night about aerobic fitness and the bicyclist Eddie Merckx. Judy remembers listening to John speak up about Merckx. When John finished talking Judy resumed brainstorming about bicycle legs.
John moved to sit beside Judy when he heard the word bicycle in Judy’s conversation. John had a suggestion about the bike leg for the triathlon. Use most of the course of the annual bicycle ride around the island. It fit! Judy added up the estimated total distance in her head, about 140 miles. That number cinched it for Judy. It was the same as the Run Club number in the name for the annual 140 mile Perimeter Relays course on the island. Soon the two said to each other, “If you do it I’ll do it.” Friends Sid and Dan Hendrickson said the same. Friends Lew Felton, Bill Larson and Bill Earley said they would help.
The paperwork structure for the triathlon was already written on 14 February 1977. The course description was on the entry forms for the 2.4 mile Roughwater Swim and the 26.2 mile Marathon. The bike course would be on the paved roads that were on the map for the Perimeter Relays, about 112 miles. On 14 February 1977 all the triathlon planning was complete but for the date in February 1978. Judy and John and long-time swim friend Bill Earley agreed to table the topic until Fall. Their announcement would be a surprise at the 1977 Swim Club Banquet. A busy calendar year was ahead of them all at work and in sport.
At the one break, Judy asked a fellow member of the Mid-Pacific Road Runners Club (M-PRRC) what to say in a letter of notice about the triathlon to be sent to the Police Department. The Collinses would send that letter once they had the exact triathlon date in mid-February 1978. With that information Judy’s triathlon planning was complete. Judy told that runner, Tom Knoll, that he could enter the Waikiki Roughwater Swim on Labor Day 1977 to train for the long distance triathlon in February 1978.
Judy and John had made all the decisions on 14 February 1977 that were needed to put on the triathlon in February 1978. They already had four who would do it and three who would help them put it on. It would be a show-up-and-go swim club event. Athletes would self-support. Each participant would have a support vehicle as in the Relays. Athletes would be required to have a paddler to guide them on the swim. Judy and John would announce their demonstration event at the annual meeting of the Waikiki Swim Club that Fall. As a surprise. They did so, on Friday, 11 November. Their around-the-island triathlon announcement really was a surprise. The swimmers laughed.
Judy and John hoped that the triathlon would become an annual event on the calendar of the Waikiki Swim Club. It was a participation event like other Swim Club Show and Go events. The goal was to finish. Their endurance event was not a race. They looked forward to running it and entering it each year. As was emphasized at the Honolulu Marathon Clinic, every finisher would be a winner. In fact the headline writer in the Honolulu Advertiser on 19 February 1978 had it right. “Iron-Man Triathlon: Haller leads 15.” All 15 athletes made history in the inaugural Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon.
There was an inside joke among friends about what one runner had said to her spouse, “You should not talk to others about your finish time for longer than it took you to do it!” Judy and John made it a point to say otherwise that night, with a smile. Those who finished their 140.6 mile around-the-island triathlon would win lifetime rights to talk about it.
Judy and John Collins ran on Sunday mornings after listening to a talk at the Honolulu Marathon Clinic. One talk was about finding the pace that made them feel they could keep running forever. Judy and John admired a runner named “Iron Man” because he seemed to be able to do that. Judy liked the idea of finding her keep-going-forever pace. Judy and John knew they would have to pace themselves to swim, bike and run around O’ahu non-stop.
All of the triathlon planning took place in bits of quiet table talk before the one intermission in the awards presentations. What they decided to do on 14 February became their simple triathlon plan until the end of that year.
Judy and John would later recall what John had said to Judy about the triathlon on Valentine’s Day 1977. “Whoever finishes first we’ll call him the Iron Man.”
At the end of the year: All had been going well until John became very worried about liability. They had learned that Swim Club events did not have insurance. What if someone sued the Collins family? The Waikiki Roughwater and the Honolulu Marathon now required entrants to be registered with the A.A.U., the Amateur Athletic Union. That insured the athletes in those events. The A.A.U. would not sanction a brand new event. The two then changed the triathlon from a club event that was open to the public to an official public event. That was because John insisted on emphasizing safety on the swim course. He applied for a permit from the the Coast Guard for use of the waters outside the Waikiki reef. That form had blanks to fill that made the triathlon a much more complicated activity than a swim club triathlon. There were spaces for titles for volunteers, contact names, a name for the event, a sponsor, support boats and more.
The sponsor could not be the Waikiki Swim Club until after the triathlon Demonstration Event in 1978. Member turnout for the demonstration triathlon would determine if the triathlon would be added to the swim club calendar. Would that mean the default sponsor was to be Judy and John Collins? Judy and John discussed the situation with an attorney who was a swim club member. They came up with a solution – a liability statement which the athletes would sign in order to enter. The purpose was to emphasize to each athlete the responsibility to have a safe event. The group of athletes who entered the triathlon would be identified as The Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon Coordinating Committee (H.I.M.T.C.C.). The time-frame of the H.I.M.T. group was for the one event. It would begin with the start of the swim leg and end at the finish. The next year, the same. All was well. No one was hurt in 1978 or 1979. Founders Judy and John would be two of those athletes who would sign the form.
There was a pre-triathlon meeting in the Collins living room on Wednesday, 15 February. The swim club member who was an attorney came to the house to explain the liability words on the entry form which each would sign. An athlete who sued “the sponsor” would be suing himself and the other participants in the triathlon, including participants Judy and John Collins. Four athletes who signed the one-event H.I.M.T. liability form in 1978 signed another one-event liability form for the 1979 event. No one was hurt. The triathlon would continue. Three of those athletes and another 1978 athlete signed a one-event liability form for the Nautilus Iron Man Triathlon in 1980.
Having an entry form for their triathlon had complicated things. Most swim club events had no entry forms. They were show up and go events with no list of names. The goal was to finish the event, not to race the event. Events like that were called Challenge events. No times were recorded. That simple goal is what the Collinses had in mind when they announced their around-the-triathlon at the 1977 Waikiki Swim Club meeting.
By January 1978 Judy and John had decided to add some extras to their triathlon. The need for an event name led to a logo.Judy and John would screen-print the Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon logo on the blank side of participants’ teeshirts before the event. They would screen-print “Finisher” on shirts afterward. John took instruction to learn how to construct the screen-print frames. John added another special touch. He bought supplies to design and make identical finisher trophies for all. Every finisher would be a trophy winner. The $5 entry fee would also cover the cost of packets of powder to make an electrolyte drink for the athletes, Gookinade.
It was the 30 day waiting time before approval of the Marine Parade permit that changed everything. The delay meant that the notice about the exact date of the February triathlon did not get in the newsletters of the swim and run clubs. Judy and John wondered how to contact their target audience, the long distance swimmers and runners.
Judy’s work at the University of Hawai’i involved contact with the press and their son Michael Collins listened to a favorite radio station each morning. Judy wanted John to feel some ownership in their triathlon by publicizing it. John did make a call to the popular radio station, KKUA. A listener called right back and entered. John told Judy in 2022, for the first time, that he did not call the newspaper in 1978. He said that a newspaper had called him. That was because “a runner” had told the Sports Columnist about the triathlon. What that runner said to the Sports Columnist about triathlon was misleading and/or the columnist made errors, too. The direct quotes from John were correct. The funny cartoon with the Sports column was welcome. Two of the 15 “78”ers said they showed up after one had seen that cartoon. Forty years later, in 2018, the Collinses felt differently about that pre-triathlon publicity. The content of that article would shadow them beginning in 1983 in Kona.
THE ROOTS OF THE ANONYMOUS “ORIGINS” STORY OF IRON MAN
Judy and John Collins learned something, in 2018, from their friend Valerie Silk. Silk said she was the anonymous author of the incorrect Ironman origins story. Part of her research evidence was the Sports Column in the Honolulu newspaper on 10 February 1978. What was said in the newspaper before their first-ever triathlon in 1978 had come back to haunt them beginning with Silk in 1982.
Judy and John’s happy memories of their Honolulu triathlons came to an end for Judy in 1983 during their first visit to see an Ironman Triathlon in Kona. Judy and John had never discussed the origins of their triathlon with each other before reading the incorrect story in the Kona Athlete magazine of 1983. The name of “the author” was Carol Hogan. Judy underlined the errors. Judy and John showed the corrected article to the author, the author stared at them and said not a word. No comment. Decades later they would learn why. Hogan became a friend but they never discussed that incident in 1983.
The first weird incident in the Collinses first visit to Ironman in Kona was at the airport. On display in Free Newspaper racks were stacks of 8.5” x 11” flyers advertising for sale An Original Iron Man Trophy made by An Original Iron Man. The Collins’ luggage contained ten more trophies that John had made for Silk for presentation to the first five women and men in the 1983 Ironman. That 1978 athlete in Kona who was selling copies of John’s 1978 and 1979 trophy awards was now selling Iron Man awards to 1983 athletes as they entered the Awards ceremony! That same “Original Iron Man” person would later find 5 other 1978 athletes to block the sale of Ironman in 1989 and in future years.
Judy and John also discovered in 1983 that each had different memories of what had happened in 1977 regarding Judy’s triathlon plan for 1978. Judy had very detailed memories. Down to the clothes they had worn and the seating arrangements on their decision night and on the night of their first public announcement. By 1983 John had very few memories of their Ironman at all but for one memory that made no sense at all to Judy.
Silk had thought she had it right when she wrote an anonymous IM origins story back in 1982. Silk and the Collinses did not meet until 1983 and the three never discussed the origins of the triathlon together. Until a brief question and answer on the phone in 2001 between Judy and Valerie. Valerie Silk said she was the media person who first wrote there was a single founder of Ironman, a man. Judy and John thought that Silk put John forward in Kona because he was a 1978 Finisher and Judy was not. Silk said she wrote an IM origins story in a hurry because she was being credited with the triathlon idea.Silk did not know about the hazards of hearsay. Or anonymity. Silk’s impressive talent was that she would change the course of the future of Ironman Triathlon. That is what mattered to athletes and to the Founders.
Versions of Silk’s well meant tale would become false leads in Ironman stories around the globe for decades to come. Sometimes the myth was helped by John’s words in interviews. And John’s default habit of saying “I” instead of “We.” There were odd questions of John on narrow topics. He gave off-the-cuff answers. Many who were well read fans of Ironman publicity took personal offense when Judy and John told a different story than what they believed. They still do decades later. There were dramatic situations. If Judy and John did not speak up then they reinforced the origins myth. One polite example was the ongoing effort to get John to say something to put beer into the origins story. Press put words in John’s mouth and he complied without thought. On one occasion John finally gave in…”well, there may have been some beer involved.” That was on camera or live. What a situation. It happened often. Worse, in 2017, their friend Silk blamed Judy and John for not telling their origins story “in the 70’s.”
Judy and John had never been interested in the “origins” of an event they were in. They were busy doing it or putting it on then looking ahead to the next event. For them sports activities were about the present event, or the next event, not about what had come before. For example. Who started the Boston Marathon? Shrug. Who started the Waikiki Rough Water Swim (WRWS)? Shrug. It took decades for Judy to think to ask about Waikiki. Even though Judy and John were on the annual organizing committee of the WRWS. Even though the Waikiki Rough Water Founder, Jim Cotton, was swimming with them in Honolulu. The topic had never come up. They knew that the Waikiki Swim Club was formed in 1971 by those who had been in the first Waikiki Rough Water Swim in 1970. Judy and John were not even curious about who was putting on the Iron Man Triathlon after the 1980 Nautilus Triathlon. It was nice enough to hear that the Triathlon continued. The family was now living on the East Coast. It never crossed the minds of Judy and John Collins that a stranger would write a history in 1982 of the origins of their Honolulu triathlons.
By the time IM Founders Judy and John Collins were invited to Kona in 1983 the incorrect IM origins lines had been circulated and reprinted for over a year. Who would imagine that there was an IM triathlon history at all in 1983, a history that named only one person, instead of two, a history that had the details wrong. Judy and John would not wonder about the source of the origins details until Silk spoke to them briefly in 2001. On the phone Judy Collins asked Valerie Silk, “Do you know who in the media first wrote there was a single founder of Ironman?” After a pause Silk said, “It was I. My ‘ex’ said it (the triathlon) was John’s idea.” Silk said she could not recall what she had said or when or where. She said she wrote ”the origins” for a magazine in the early 1980’s. She said she “may have published” the magazine. Silk had given away all her papers.
The hunt was on in June 2001 for Judy and John Collins to find what Silk had written that became the IM origins “myth.” The Collinses finally found the first “anonymous” article from 1982 and a 1983 one, too, in 2018. Silk had named John Collins as IM Founder. Silk told them more in emails in 2017 and 2018. Silk’s name was never given as the source in the incorrect press accounts. Evidently no member of the Sports Press ever asked about the source. All read and believed and repeated what was said in the early 1980s IM Press Releases and in articles about the Ironman Triathlons in the 1970s. Judy and John were awash in the IM origins story so often that they almost believed it. Brainwashing? There was an Ironman origins script in Kona that the Collinses knew nothing about.
Judy and John Collins were not students of triathlon but for occasional trips to Kona. They lived and worked on the East Coast before they moved West again, then lived aboard their cruising sailboat for almost 20 years. Judy and John had no television, no magazine subscriptions, no triathlon books, no family files of the Honolulu years aboard their home afloat. They called Panamá home for half the year. Judy and John started an off-road triathlon in Portobelo, Panamá in 1998 that is still going on. They invited triathlon writers from the U.S. to be in it. Writers then credited the Portobelo Triathlon to only John Collins instead of to Judy Collins and John Collins. What was going on?
Judy Collins noticed in 2018 that three athletes in the 1982 Ironman triathlon had become well known and prolific triathlon writers – Babbitt, Plant and Tinley. No wonder those three had repeated the anonymous IM origins myth. What they and newspaper writers did not know. The anonymous author of the myth in the 1982 Kona athlete program had used as research an unverified Sports column that was printed before the first triathlon had been held. Surely all those three writers assumed that what they read in Kona was true. Judy and John did not know about those myths when they arrived in Kona in 1983. Or for decades to come. All three 1980’s writers were friendly to Judy and John on many occasions. Babbitt alone may have been the one to change IM Founder to IM Founders in 2002 and 2003. That happened after Judy and John and Michael Collins had participated in Iron Man Revisited (IMR) in Honolulu. Judy and Michael Collins did the original Honolulu Iron Man course. It was a benefit event for the Challenged Athletes Foundation. Babbitt’s recognition of two Founders of Ironman made a big difference to Judy and John. Yet press, athletes, friends and family continue to resist hearing Judy and John’s IM history.
The Kona version of IM origins was an ongoing frustrating mystery to the Collinses from 1983 on. It finally kept them away from Kona. They made an exception when their son Michael was doing the IM, every 5 years. They had not a clue until 2018 that the origins of the same old misinformation had come from IM Press Releases. Press releases?! They had never seen one. After 1982 the media accounts varied in details like the party game of “gossip,” as information was copied from person to person. Each interviewer of John Collins put a twist into a question to elicit a fresh response from him, or, if in written form, from both Judy and John. Then that misleading out-of-context answer in that story was copied by another and passed around the internet.
It may be that 14 of the 15 “original” 1978 athletes now believe the origins tale that began in the Kona Triathlon Athlete programs of 1982 and 1983. An incorrect and anonymous history was perpetuated in the Ironman Kona Press Releases from the early 80’s. Then repeated by others. Internet repetition has made the incorrect history appear to be true. An original error in IM Press Releases has been repeated on websites and on many reputable sites for many years. Multiple mentions of the same false story does not make it true. The myth’s various details included a single founder, beer, a challenge, military, macho males. Where had that come from? Had one scribe added the mention of beer in the origins myth story because Ironman’s first sponsor in 1982 was Bud Lite?
A Pulitzer Prize winner writer from the New York Times had promised Judy and John Collins that they could fact-check the parts about them in the final draft of his story in 2019. He had decided to showcase some litigious 1978 IM athletes. The story was delayed for many weeks. He did not send Judy and John Collins the final draft. About 18 incorrect words would have made his account correct without changing the theme of his story at all. They asked him why he did not send the Collins origins parts to them to fact-check. He said he had put words from the Ironman website in his lead. He thought the Ironman website words might be incorrect. He said the errors might give Judy and John an opportunity to respond to the story. Was he looking for “clicks?” Is that what journalism has become in the New York Times In the Sports Section? John told Judy that he refused to get into a “flame war” in the New York Times.
The misinformation details of the 1980s about Ironman origins remained the basis for most sports press stories and books. That was the mystery. Interviews by non-sports writers had the facts right.
The years of “journalist” errors finally hit home when a Honolulu reporter got it wrong. She was an excellent writer whose family were long time Collins friends. Even she wrote a version of the false “IM Press Release” absent a changed sentence or two. Their answers to her interview questions had included mention of sport in their shared home town. It was one more “evergreen” anniversary story to the writer, a reprint with a fresh sentence to use as a lead. It still happens. Friendly sports interviewers take a lot of time to elicit a few new words. Judy and John, ever hopeful, have said yes to earnest interviewers or filmers again and again. And still do, in 2023.
Judy and John Collins had thought each media person who wrote an incorrect story was simply ignoring what they had to say. Maybe sports writers were not trained journalists? What had happened to fact-checking? It was so rare among sports press. They realized what had happened when Silk explained her hearsay sources and anonymous writing and editing of Ironman writing in the 1980’s. Then Silk said in 2017 and 2018 that the incorrect story was now everywhere. Too late now. Judy and John should have told their story in the 1970’s. Once the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or the Ironman website or Wikipedia prints it…it must be true? Well, no.
Why was it that Judy Collins had phoned Val Silk in June 2001? It was because an IM website writer, a friend, had sent the Collinses a “puff piece” about John Collins that was filled with factual errors about Ironman origins. Munting probably wanted praise from John for writing “An Officer and a Gentleman.” Among other errors there was an incorrect Finish place cited for John in the 1974 Mission Bay Triathlon. The MBT website editor, Jack Johnstone, told Judy that day that he had made up the number because he could not find John’s name on the 1974 finish list. After that call Judy and John asked Munting to use John’s correct finish number. He said no. But it is wrong they countered. Munting answered that he dd not mind if what he wrote was wrong as long as he could cite it (the wrong information) on the internet. And, “I like my lead.”
Silk heard from Judy and John about the IM writer “citing the internet to justify keeping a known error in an ironman website story. It was simply a number change! It was then that Judy asked Silk, “Do you know who in the media first wrote there was a single founder of Ironman?” When Silk said, “It was I” there was a sense of relief for Judy and John. That part of the IM origins myth was finally solved. They would not learn until 2018 that Silk wrote anonymously and wrote or edited all the IM Press Releases in the 1980’s. Judy and John are now grateful that Munting wrote and sent them that error-filled “puff piece” about John Collins. Munting did not fact-check with the Collinses again. But his “I like my lead” attitude toward incorrect facts was why Judy and John called Val Silk that day. What Silk told them was the beginning of a 17 year quest to solve the mystery of the IM origins myth. In January 2019 there was a NYT writer about IM who liked his lead too, even though he realized it might be wrong. And was.
Not many know this. In 1978 in Honolulu 10 of the 15 athletes at the swim start were strangers to Judy and John, not the run-swim colleagues they knew. Judy and John Collins had no reason at all to tell the athletes why they had decided to put on the triathlon. The KKUA listener who called John at work about the triathlon did not meet Judy and John until 10 or 20 years later in Kona, Hawai’i. He was in the 1978 Hawaiian Iron Man and showed up in 1979 too. Race Director Valerie Silk did not meet Judy and John Collins until she invited them to Kona in 1983. The Ironman Founders were always impressed with the Ironman Triathlon on the Big Island. They were always puzzled in Kona by the incorrect origins details in conversation with friendly Kona residents and by the Kona print and TV persons. It seems there is a Kona script and Judy and John did not/do not have a copy of it. Another puzzle was a 1978er who showed up in Kona often. 1978 er Tom Knoll had left Honolulu in early 1978 after the triathlon. Judy and John Collins had never ever talked with Knoll about why they had put on the triathlon. Yet Knoll wrote about it in a book. And got it wrong, of course. Puzzling.
In later years Judy and John noticed that many of the 1978 “originals” gave an origins story about 1978 that had not been written until 1982. That had even happened to their run-swim friends who had been at the table the night Judy and John made the decision, Dan Hendrickson and Sid. Most weird of all? Valerie Silk would tell Judy and John, in 2014, to read how Ironman began (!) by reading the books by Mike Plant and Tom Knoll. What Silk did not know? The source of the origins myth for Plant and Knoll had been the reworded anonymous story begun by Silk. It began with the story that appeared in IM publications and IM Press Releases back in 1982. Silk thought her anonymous story was true. TV, writers, the Ironman website and Wikipedia believed that what “Ironman” had said in the 1980s was true. So true that interviewers dismissed what was said and written by Founders Judy Collins and John Collins. As “false.” It did not match what the fan or athlete or writer or TV or radio interviewer knew was “true.”
THE SIMPLE ORIGINS STORY OF IRON MAN
The origins story of Iron Man Triathlon may be too simple. A swimmer who ran and bicycled, Judy Collins, wanted to introduce triathlon to Hawai’i by linking the Waikiki Rough Water Swim to the Honolulu Marathon with a bike leg. A bicyclist who ran and swam, John Collins, had a good idea for a bike leg that went around the island. Together they created the first long distance triathlon in the world, The Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon.
In Honolulu Hawai’i in the late 1970s…
Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon Founders Judy and John Collins remember their relief in February 1978 when the last finisher crossed the Honolulu Marathon finish line by the Bandstand at Kapiolani Park. After the 2.4 mile swim, the 112 mile bike ride, the 26.2 mile marathon, all was well. Every one of the 15 athletes who had started the swim and the bike legs and followed the detailed safety rules had made The Inaugural Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon a success. The headline in The Honolulu Advertiser Sports section the next morning:
“Iron-Man Triathlon: Haller leads 15”
©2023 <ThisWasTriathlon.org> Judith MacGregor Collins,Panamá
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