1982 Julie Moss

Back in February 1982, the big blue-and-white trucker's cap handed out to the competitors seemed a little too big, like the oversized baseball hat on Charlie Brown. The smiling, freckle-faced, red-headed kid underneath did not seem to fit the serious mien expected of endurance champions. But like some National Velvet fantasy, Julie Moss, a Cal Poly undergraduate working on her senior thesis in physical education - in her first major sporting event of any kind - came out of nowhere to build a seemingly insurmountable lead in this amazing new challenge, the Hawaiian Ironman triathlon. She ran out of glycogen and electrolytes just a quarter mile from victory; she seemed like Bambi slipping on the ice. As she neared the end, Moss had a six-minute lead with a half-mile to go and was desperately searching for one last erg of energy to get to the end. Falling and awkwardly triangulating her flopping limbs to find the leverage to rise, she tipped over one last time with a few yards to go as she waved off her mother trying to slip a lei over her neck. "Later, I realized I could have won if I'd simply walked to the finish," recalls Moss. "But I wanted to honor the effort I'd put into it. In the moment, I felt in order to honor the event I had to run across the finish."

Finally, feebly pushing away help because outside assistance might get her disqualified, Julie Moss lay on the asphalt 10 yards from the finish and decided to crawl. While Kathleen McCartney passed her just 10 yards and 29 seconds from victory, Moss won the hearts of the nation and, in a larger sense, gave a heart and a soul to the sport itself.

That young face, with her plucky look of determination, turned her into some aerobic Helen of Troy and launched more triathletes than any other ever will. Mark Allen, who went on dominate the sport and take six victories in Kona, says that Julie "looked nine feet tall" as he watched her struggle on ABC's Wide World of Sports segment, and she inspired him to take up the sport. Photo by Carol Hogan. 

1987 Jan Ripple

It was no surprise to anyone who competed against Jan Ripple in the Olympic-distance USTS series and prestigious triathlons from St. Croix to the very first ITU World Championship (she took second place in both in 1989), that she was invited to compete in the American Gladiators television show. Because in her pro career, as a triathlete and in the many sports she embraced as a kid growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Ripple was a gladiator. With a powerful, muscular body that was all fast-twitch, the mother of three had a very successful, highly-sponsored sprint-distance career and never needed to take on the Ironman. But that's not the way fearless gladiators look at it. 

To make matters worse, Ripple had a tendency to lose sweat and salt at an alarming rate, a physiology designed to make the Ironman a nightmare. In her first Ironman Hawaii in 1987, Ripple was running well when she was overcome and went into dramatic spasms and twitching mega-cramps on Ali'i Drive, all caught in agonizing, wide-angle, in-your-face close-ups by an ABC camera. If Julie Moss's crawl was accompanied by soft flute music and inspiring, soft-focus camera work, Ripple's ordeal might well have been played with heavy metal and shot in the style of a horror movie. In the 32 minutes she took to cover the last mile, she dropped from fifth to near 20th and was out on her feet at the end. She lapsed into unconsciousness for eight and a half hours that night, and doctors said she was near death.

Yet the very next year, trying to find a hydration and nutrition solution, she did a seven-hour Ironman workout in a physiology lab at Duke University - and passed out. Undaunted, Ripple did the real thing that October and ended up in the med tent with severe cramps. Photo by Lois Schwartz.

1995 Paula Newby-Fraser

The greatest Ironman triathlete of all time decided that eight would be quite enough thank you, and she vowed that the 1995 edition of Ironman would be her last as a serious contender for the win. With seven Kona wins since her first in 1986 and a still-standing (as of 2008) race record in the books, Newby-Fraser said she was completely healthy for the first time in years. "There will be no excuses," said Newby-Fraser. "This will be their last shot at me." And just 20 miles into the bike, Karen Smyers was shadowing Newby-Fraser when they were hit by the opening salvo from one of the most brutal winds in Kona history.

"Paula just tore into the headwind like an arrow, and before I knew it, there was a huge gap I could not make up," says Smyers. By the end of the bike, Newby-Fraser had a historically insurmountable 11:30 lead.

Smyers, on her way to a third-best Kona marathon time of 3:05:20, kept chipping away and whittled the margin to three minutes with 10K to go. "By the time I got out of the Energy Lab, I realized I was suffering from some heat exhaustion," says Newby-Fraser, who was uncharacteristically skipping some aid stations after she heard reports of Smyers' approaching footsteps. By the end of the downhill on Palani Road and taking a left on Kuakini with less than a mile left, Newby-Fraser had a minute lead but was weaving all over the road. "I stopped at one point and said ‘I can't finish,'" recalls Newby-Fraser. "I was starting to lose consciousness. Even now, as I look back on it, I think ‘Why couldn't I have kept going another 400 yards?'" As Smyers sprinted past her on Hualalai Road, Newby-Fraser wobbled into her rival and the challenger held up Newby-Fraser for an instant to prevent her from falling.

Newby-Fraser then sat down on the sidewalk. Crowds and photographers pressed in, and someone poured water on her head to cool her down. "When I sat down on the curb, I said to myself ‘Just take another step,'" says Newby-Fraser. "But there was no way I could move. I actually thought I had given my life to that race and I was going to die. I felt like I was going into seizure." Waving off suggestions she should ride an ambulance to a nearby hospital, she says: "I was determined to finish, even if I had to wait until midnight and cross with Darryl Haley." 20 minutes later, Newby-Fraser gathered herself and walked in fourth. In perhaps her finest hour, Newby-Fraser worried only that her dramatic meltdown didn't "take away from what an awesome race Karen had." With her perfect professional adieu marred, perfectionist Paula made a curtain call bow in 1996, out-dueling rookie legend Natascha Badmann for that eighth win. Photo by Rich Cruse.

1995 Bill Bell

At age 53, a stress test revealed that Bill Bell had an irregular heartbeat and his doctor told him to run 40 minutes a day, three days a week. Little did anyone know that prescription would unleash an age-defying, indefatigably cheerful aerobic monster who would eventually set a record when he finished Ironman California at age 78. But Bell's signature moment came at age 72, at a race he didn't officially finish.

Roughly seven hours after Paula Newby-Fraser's infamous meltdown, Bell was hanging by a thread when he entered the finish chute, with only seconds before the midnight cutoff. When his wife Margie leaned over the barrier to place a lei over his head, Bell fell over, got up and fell over again. "My legs wouldn't cooperate," he says. Weak as a kitten, Bell crawled the last few yards and stretched his hand to touch the finish line, then lay there unmoving. No matter that Bell was two minutes, 35 seconds past the 17-hour official cutoff, the crowd erupted in cheers. Newby-Fraser had returned to the finish line to applaud the finishers and was a few feet from Bell when he collapsed. "I was afraid he might be dead," she says with a shudder. Not to worry; the irrepressible Bell continued adding to his Ironman finishes for seven more years. Photo by Robert Oliver.

1997 Wendy Ingraham (right) and Sian Welch (left)

Just an hour after Chris Legh's serious collapse came a melodramatic version of Julie Moss's original crawl, with a touch of humor added. Wendy Ingraham, who had led the race for the first seven hours, was dueling the onrushing Sian Welch for fourth place as they approached Ali'i Drive. Ingraham and Welch had both arrived in Hawaii as elite contenders; and they were in full warrior mode when they simultaneously ran out of glycogen and lost control of their legs in the last few yards before the finish.

Welch went down first. Then she dragged herself up and tried to run but her legs buckled. Staggering forward, she reached the finish line chute and grabbed at the side railing to steady herself. At that moment, announcer Mike Reilly told the crowd "Here comes Wendy!"

"It was like a surreal Fellini cartoon," says Paula Newby-Fraser, who had come to the finish to celebrate training partner Heather Fuhr's win. "Wendy was coming with her legs wide like a preying mantis. She could not hold her back straight and she was bent over like an old lady."

Welch tried to go forward and collapsed. She then tried to get up and bumped into Ingraham and both went down together.

Just 20 yards from the finish, first Sian, then Wendy tried to get up and failed. Up and down. Up and down. Still, Ingraham didn't lose her clarity of mind nor her sense of humor. She started to crawl. Welch caught on a moment later, and they began a demented diaper derby dash for the $15,000 fourth-place prize. Ingraham hit the line first, then extended her hand to her rival. Later, Welch quipped "Since Julie Moss started all this 15 years ago and she said this would be her last race in Hawaii, I guess Wendy and I did this as a tribute."

Half an hour later, a more careful Julie Moss took second in the
35-39 age group and danced at the finish line. Photo of Wendy Ingraham (right) and Sian Welch (left) by Rich Cruse.

1997 Chris Legh

In 1997, Chris Legh earned the respect of the Ironman world with a third-place finish at Ironman Australia in a world-class time of 8:17 - the fastest Ironman time ever by an Aussie. In October, the 24-year-old Melbourne native was determined to make a bold move on the sport's biggest stage. But straightaway on the bike, he was unable to keep any fluids or food down. "I threw up almost immediately after I ate or drank anything, so by the turnaround at Hawi, I was six or seven minutes down to the leaders," Legh told journalist Shane Smith. "Once I had seen the leaders, I promised myself I would chase hard one last time and slowly began reeling everyone in." On a surge of adrenaline and courage, he caught eventual winner Thomas Hellriegel before the end of the ride, and together they chased leader Jurgen Zack for the first four miles of the run. Desperately trying to top off his radiator, Legh let Hellriegel go to stop and take in liquids. By the time he hit mile eight, Legh was vomiting and battling diarrhea. Somehow, Legh held it together through mile 25. But running down Palani Road in sixth place, Legh was delirious.

"As I entered Ali'i Drive, I started to fall and crawl," he says. "Finally I rolled over unconscious 50 meters short of the finish line." Like a boxer who was KO'd, Legh was ruled in physical danger and properly counted out of the race by WTC president David Yates, then carried across the finish line on a stretcher. The next day, Legh developed a 109-degree fever and had an emergency operation. Surgeons removed his appendix and cut out a 16-centimter section of his large intestine, which had suffered necrosis due to dehydration and lack of blood. Happily, Legh made a miraculously quick recovery and the next spring engaged in an epic race to the finish with Canadian Peter Reid at Ironman Australia. While he struggled for years with other medical problems that limited his Ironman efforts, Legh's 1997 collapse and subsequent recovery (with the help of the Gatorade Sports Science Institute) to win Ironman Coeur d'Alene in 2005 and became the subject of one of the most famous ads in TV history.  Photo by Lois Schwartz.