Read the previous two instalments of Ironwoman, the (first draft of a) novel, as well as an introduction here.
Disclaimer: Although inspired in part by true incidents, the following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event.
“OK then. So this woman beat all the guys, you say. I guess that is something. And this is a big race right? So who is she?”
“Next headline, Ed,” Megan says, interrupting her editor to save time.
Megan reads out three lines that Ed will send as separate sentences all words in capital letters behind an asterix to the Bloomberg wire immediately.
“TARA WIESNER WINS IRONMAN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS”
“WIESNER BEATS FASTEST MAN BY 5 MINUTES”
“WIESNER FIRST FEMALE TO WIN CHAMPIONSHIP OUTRIGHT”
“OK,” says Ed. “Now gimme the fill.”
Megan thinks for a few seconds to construct the lead sentence with the key piece of news for the fill Ed is waiting for, then says, “Tara Wiesner became the first woman to win the 29th Ironman World Championships in Hawaii outright, beating all her competitors including the men by nearly five minutes and smashing the female course record by 40 minutes.”
“Thanks. I need four graphs within 15 minutes Megan,” Ed says as she hears him type, hopefully the words she gave him as editors tend to have the final say in each story.
An advantage of working for a news wire is that the stories are built like pieces of Lego. It starts with a small block, a headline. As soon as a reporter finds out a piece of news or as soon as a company, government releases a statement or a person speaks, the most important information is condensed in one line sentences that are sent to the Bloomberg newswire, which simply means that clients can see this piece of news on their Bloomberg terminal.
The competition with the other newswires Reuters, Dow Jones and AP is fierce. At press conferences reporters from competing news wires will keep as close an eye on each other as the chief executive because as soon as one journalist them reaches for a cell phone, the others better do too.
Clients of the news wires, mostly Wall Street money men, stand to lose if the other news wires report something first, allowing the clients’ rivals to buy or sell faster. Billions of dollars can be made or lost at the touch of a button.
At Bloomberg, daily scorecards make the rounds on the biggest stories of the previous day. They show how many seconds, or if somebody really screwed up how many minutes, separated the first headline sent by either Bloomberg, Dow Jones or Reuters, and occasionally AP, the first story that appeared and subsequent updates. Updates of stories have more Lego blocks on it than the previous one. Megan already knew of the wrath of the editor in chief when a reporter wasn't up to speed.
As soon as a headline is sent, the reporter and her editor have five minutes to create one paragraph with the most important piece of news. That piece of news also will have references to other places on the Bloomberg where clients can find information related to the topic(s). It will also have a headline, dateline and byline including the names and phone numbers of people responsible for that story, allowing readers to contact the right person in seconds.
While Bloomberg reports mainly on financial news, it has reporters worldwide covering sports the majority of clients like such as soccer and cricket. Megan was an avid triathlete herself especially keen on the long distance events. It wasn't easy doing both. Her job took a minimum of 50 hours a week—with lunch between keystrokes and phone calls, while her triathlon training took at least 25 hours a week.
Triathlon wasn’t a sport any of Bloomberg’s sports reporters paid any attention too. Somehow she’d convinced her boss that this year Bloomberg needed a reporter at the Ironman World Championships in Kona and that she was the right person to do it. All her colleagues were jealous when they found out.
Megan and her boss Kane Donan got along great. She realized how much of a favour he did her by sending her to this event.
But now, she’d have the chance of her life to make a name for herself in the journalism world with this story. Most of the other reporters here at the world championships were working for the triathlon magazines. It would usually take at least another week if not two or longer for the magazines to appear. The reporter for the local newspaper may write a few words, but those would only appear tomorrow.
So any other news wire, newspaper and even TV and radio one who wanted to publish this story themselves may have to use hers and attribute it. That would earn her a “News You Can Use,” a must-have email from one of the managing editors sent to everyone in Bloomberg News worldwide and helpful in arguing for a salary increase come annual review time.
Now she’d better think about the other three paragraphs she needs to give him within a quarter hour. Since Megan, as always, prepared well for this event with story templates with important details such as the course record for men and women, it doesn’t take her long to come up with the next paragraphs. She is reminded yet again of the advantage of solid research in preparation before any news event.
She types on her laptop that thankfully has a battery lasting at least a couple of hours, “Wiesner, a Czech Republic national, broke the tape in 8:15:48, 4 minutes and 11 seconds ahead of the second finisher and the first male, Chris McDougall of Australia. Wiesner smashed the women’s course record of 8:55:28, set by Petra Nova-Francis in 1992.”
Megan checks the numbers on the fastest times set in the Kona Ironman so far. She feels excited and astonished as she writes the next sentence of her four-paragraph lead she needs to file in 7 minutes from now.
“Wiesner has narrowed the gap between the women’s course record and the men’s 8:04:08 set by Luke von Laser in 1996) to 11:40, from 51:28. Before today, the narrowest margin between the male and female world champion in the same year was 30:01 in 1988 when Steve Miller crossed the line in 8:31:00 and Nova-Francis followed in 9:01:01.”
Now Megan needs one more paragraph, the one called the nut graph—the why-should-anyone-care-about-this graph. She has four minutes left to create one. As much as she thought she had done her due diligence in preparing for this race report, she had simply not anticipated this outcome. Megan takes a deep breath and thinks, What does Wiesner’s victory mean?
Women have been involved in the relatively young sport of triathlon from almost the beginning. In 1978, when the event that is now the Ironman World Championships was held for the first time 15 men started and 12 finished. The following year, one woman Linda Leeman was among the 14 people starting. Not only was she among the 11 that finished, her time of 12:55:38 was the fifth-fastest overall and would have given her third overall in the first edition.
A very impressive result in every possible way, and especially considering the fact that in 1979 it would still be another five years before females were allowed to compete at the marathon distance at the Olympic Games amid concern that endurance sports like distance running would damage women’s health. And it had only been in 1972 that women were first officially allowed to run the Boston Marathon, the world’s oldest annual marathon race.
Unusually, in triathlon prize money for the women pros is the same as it is for the men. However, even this sport including in Kona the overall male participation rate far outnumbers that of the women.
Megan writes, “Wiesner’s victory in the race that involves swimming 3.8km, cycling 180.1km followed by a 42.2km, or marathon distance, may mark a turning point in the fight for women’s equality in sports and comes barely two decades after women were first allowed to race the marathon at the 1984 Olympic Games.”
Done—at least for now, Megan thinks as she quickly emails her four-paragraph story to Ed.
Megan always worked hard and loved the intensity of working at the news wire. It has given her a chance to live in different parts of the world and travel. A perk of the demanding job was that, like other reporters and Bloomberg employees, she'd stay in the better hotels, fly business class for a flight over eight hours and use a credit card to take out sources. The latter was exactly what she hoped to do now.
She followed Tara as the world champion walked over the recovery area toward the oranges and melons.
"Hi Tara? My name is Megan. I am a reporter with Bloomberg News."
"Hi Megan. Sorry, who are you with?"
To be continued...
Showing posts with label Ironwoman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ironwoman. Show all posts
October 16, 2010
October 09, 2010
Ironwoman, a novel (Part 2)
Read Part 1 of Ironwoman and the inspiration for this yet to be finished novel here.
Disclaimer: Although inspired in part by true incidents, the following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event.
Tara looked up, smiled and looked at all the incredulous faces around her. “It feels good,” she replied. “Real good.” Then everyone started shouting their questions at once. “How were you able to beat all the men? How long have you been in the sport? Who is your coach?”
Tara looked back and forth at all the shouting reporters around her as if waiting for the one question she wanted to respond to the most. She didn’t seem to hear it and then said, “How come none of you want to ask me about whether I am clean? Isn’t that what most of you are wondering?”
Silence. This was an unexpected turn. Tara obviously wanted one of the reporters to say something before she would answer her own question. That was the price. She wanted it said.
Megan again was the first one to find her voice. “Well, sooner or later that question might indeed be asked. I guess that no one wanted to antagonize you before knowing who you are. Or perhaps everybody was waiting for the exclusive interview with you as to get the scoop.”
Tara nodded and seemed satisfied with the response. “I sensed throughout my whole race astonishment from my fellow athletes and spectators. I know that I have done what no one ever thought possible or maybe not possible for a long time. I myself, before today, wasn’t sure whether I could do it, but I knew I had a good shot at it if my body felt right. And it did.”
Tara smiles again. She is pretty, in an athletic way. Her tall lean body shows every muscle is developed. Her dark hair is tied in a pony tail and even after swimming, cycling and running for eight hours she looks fresh. She sits upright in her chair, though she could be forgiven for being less disciplined about sitting in the proper posture right now.
It is probably second nature, Megan thinks. Megan is intrigued by this Czech woman. And not just because she just became the world’s best Ironman triathlete. There is something about her, something in her composure after having accomplished one of the most amazing feats in history. Megan is struck by Tara’s show of confidence.
Tara doesn’t seem at all surprised by what she’s just achieved. And yet, she expects everyone else to be. And she is right about that.
Christian, who finished five minutes behind her as the first guy and his best finish in Kona to date, is making his way to the group. No reporter has to check his race program to figure out who Christian is. He is one of the world’s rare triathletes who have been able to compete at the highest level in both short and long distance. Instead of throwing questions at him, the reporters watch as Christian approaches Tara.
They are unsure of what is about to happen but know it will be something worth reporting. Christian himself doesn’t appear sure of what he is going to do or say. The only thing he seems to know is that he has to talk to the person who beat him. He’d have done that if it had been a man, so he will too now that it is a woman. He stops at Tara’s chair. “Tara?” he starts.
Tara gets up, smiles confidently and offers her hand for Christian to shake. “Hi Christian,” she says. Christian hesitates for a second, eying her from head to toe and then shakes her hand firmly.
“Congratulations, you have done something amazing,” he says. “I don’t mean it is a big deal because you beat me, though that is quite something too, but I mean by going faster than every other person out there. It really is … I don’t know quite what to call it.”
Megan phones her editor at the Bloomberg office in Sydney. “Yhuellow?”
“Ed, it’s Megan. I have some heads from the Ironman.”
She hears Ed sigh. “Megan, we have been over this before. You are lucky to be there and writing about it, but no heads. Nobody gives a toss about your Ironman.”
“Ed, listen, we need heads. Here’s the first;
*FEMALE BECOMES IRONMAN TRIATHLON WORLD CHAMPION
“Megan, give it a rest. I am busy.”
“Ed, did you hear what I just said? A woman just won the race. Outright. She beat all the men. In a race where a who’s who of Ironman triathletes is racing. A woman beat all the guys. It is like Paula Radcliffe winning the Boston Marathon, and that before anyone had ever heard of her, and beating the likes of Haile Gebrselassie.”
“This is going to be a huge story, whether she is clean or not. It is going to be huge. Do you want to wait until you get a call from New York asking why Dow and Reuters are running stories and we don’t, while we even have a reporter on the ground?”
To be continued...
Disclaimer: Although inspired in part by true incidents, the following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event.
Tara looked up, smiled and looked at all the incredulous faces around her. “It feels good,” she replied. “Real good.” Then everyone started shouting their questions at once. “How were you able to beat all the men? How long have you been in the sport? Who is your coach?”
Tara looked back and forth at all the shouting reporters around her as if waiting for the one question she wanted to respond to the most. She didn’t seem to hear it and then said, “How come none of you want to ask me about whether I am clean? Isn’t that what most of you are wondering?”
Silence. This was an unexpected turn. Tara obviously wanted one of the reporters to say something before she would answer her own question. That was the price. She wanted it said.
Megan again was the first one to find her voice. “Well, sooner or later that question might indeed be asked. I guess that no one wanted to antagonize you before knowing who you are. Or perhaps everybody was waiting for the exclusive interview with you as to get the scoop.”
Tara nodded and seemed satisfied with the response. “I sensed throughout my whole race astonishment from my fellow athletes and spectators. I know that I have done what no one ever thought possible or maybe not possible for a long time. I myself, before today, wasn’t sure whether I could do it, but I knew I had a good shot at it if my body felt right. And it did.”
Tara smiles again. She is pretty, in an athletic way. Her tall lean body shows every muscle is developed. Her dark hair is tied in a pony tail and even after swimming, cycling and running for eight hours she looks fresh. She sits upright in her chair, though she could be forgiven for being less disciplined about sitting in the proper posture right now.
It is probably second nature, Megan thinks. Megan is intrigued by this Czech woman. And not just because she just became the world’s best Ironman triathlete. There is something about her, something in her composure after having accomplished one of the most amazing feats in history. Megan is struck by Tara’s show of confidence.
Tara doesn’t seem at all surprised by what she’s just achieved. And yet, she expects everyone else to be. And she is right about that.
Christian, who finished five minutes behind her as the first guy and his best finish in Kona to date, is making his way to the group. No reporter has to check his race program to figure out who Christian is. He is one of the world’s rare triathletes who have been able to compete at the highest level in both short and long distance. Instead of throwing questions at him, the reporters watch as Christian approaches Tara.
They are unsure of what is about to happen but know it will be something worth reporting. Christian himself doesn’t appear sure of what he is going to do or say. The only thing he seems to know is that he has to talk to the person who beat him. He’d have done that if it had been a man, so he will too now that it is a woman. He stops at Tara’s chair. “Tara?” he starts.
Tara gets up, smiles confidently and offers her hand for Christian to shake. “Hi Christian,” she says. Christian hesitates for a second, eying her from head to toe and then shakes her hand firmly.
“Congratulations, you have done something amazing,” he says. “I don’t mean it is a big deal because you beat me, though that is quite something too, but I mean by going faster than every other person out there. It really is … I don’t know quite what to call it.”
Megan phones her editor at the Bloomberg office in Sydney. “Yhuellow?”
“Ed, it’s Megan. I have some heads from the Ironman.”
She hears Ed sigh. “Megan, we have been over this before. You are lucky to be there and writing about it, but no heads. Nobody gives a toss about your Ironman.”
“Ed, listen, we need heads. Here’s the first;
*FEMALE BECOMES IRONMAN TRIATHLON WORLD CHAMPION
“Megan, give it a rest. I am busy.”
“Ed, did you hear what I just said? A woman just won the race. Outright. She beat all the men. In a race where a who’s who of Ironman triathletes is racing. A woman beat all the guys. It is like Paula Radcliffe winning the Boston Marathon, and that before anyone had ever heard of her, and beating the likes of Haile Gebrselassie.”
“This is going to be a huge story, whether she is clean or not. It is going to be huge. Do you want to wait until you get a call from New York asking why Dow and Reuters are running stories and we don’t, while we even have a reporter on the ground?”
To be continued...
October 08, 2010
Ironwoman, a novel (Part 1)
Introduction to Ironwoman, a novel: As an author of three non-fiction books and a soon-to-be-published collection of poems, I have written very little fiction, and certainly none that has been published.
But in 2005, after quitting my job as a reporter for Bloomberg News after more than seven years to take time off and compete in three Ironmans in Australia, Germany and New Zealand respectively over a period of 11 months, I felt inspired to try fiction.
What if a woman were to win the Ironman World Championships outright?
The idea was sparked in part by the performances of women ultrarunners Ann Trason and Pam Reed.
I began writing, using both my vivid imagination and my experience with the sport I’d been involved in as an age grouper since 1999. After creating 12,747 words I stopped.
Two years later, I was in Kona to watch my partner Tim compete in his first Ironman World Championships. That was 2007 and I also watched a then unknown win the woman's championships title. She's since become a household name, having three successive wins in Hawaii. This Saturday she's poised to make it four.
At the time of my first fiction attempt with the working title Ironwoman in September and October 2005, the fastest Ironman time by a female was 8:50:53 set by Paula Newby-Fraser in Roth in 1994; this record was not bettered until the Dutch Yvonne van Vlerken did so in July 2008—a whopping 14 years later.
Since then women have sped up though none more so than Chrissie Wellington who has made Ironman even more exciting, as she redefines what’s possible—not just for women but also for men. At Roth in July this year, she improved the fastest Ironman time for women to 8:19.
Now women are within half an hour of the men. The men’s Ironman record is 7:50:27, set by Belgium’s Luc van Lierde in 1997, also in Roth. When I saw a Daily Mail article on the Xtri.com website yesterday, in which Chrissie is quoted as saying that it is only a matter of time before the women beat the men, I thought of what I had written five years ago, revisited it and decided to publish this unfinished draft in short instalments, before fiction becomes reality.
I want to re-emphasize that I wrote this two full years before I, and most people in the sport, had heard about Chrissie. I want to make clear that the character I chose is entirely fictional and has absolutely nothing to do with any specific female triathlete.
At the time I simply wanted to explore a story about something that seemed impossible—a woman taking the overall crown in Kona and what impact that would have on the discussion of the sport. My inspiration was the eternal quest for improvement in sport, as in humanity.
I believe that in the young sport of triathlon, Ironman, athletes have so much more potential. And in 2005 I believed that women particularly had a lot more to offer to this sport. I still do.
I wanted to explore how we look at athletic performance, especially that of women. It was only 1972 that women were first allowed to run the Boston Marathon, the world's oldest, and only 1984 until women could compete in the marathon at the Olympic Games.
I also wanted to explore how our perceptions of performances have been cast into doubt by the rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs in any sport. Most of all I wanted to explore how I, as both a writer and an avid endurance athlete, would approach the subject.
If I let her win in the opening scene, would I as the author allow her to be a superb athlete, a hero, or would I turn her into a villain?
Disclaimer: Although inspired in part by true incidents, the following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event. And I repeat, I wrote this draft in 2005.
Ironwoman (part I)
“She is about to do what no other woman has ever done. And something only a few men have done. This is history in the making. This is … this is … She is breaking the tape now. She has done it.”
Mark Rally, the Ironman World Championships announcer, then falls silent for a moment. He seems unsure of what to say next, something that rarely happens. He must be thinking what most other people at the finish line of the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, are.
How can a woman win this race, this exhausting triathlon in one of the most humid places on earth that takes the fastest as many hours as most people’s work day in the office? Is it possible for a woman to beat the best male endurance triathletes in the world without any help from performance-enhancing drugs? Should they expend energy celebrating this unbelievable win?
It wouldn’t be the first time that a triathlete has been found guilty of drug use to go that extra bit faster. In fact, it happened last year when Norma Klaus crossed the line as first female and was crowned accordingly before a positive drug test showed it wasn't simply hard training that had gotten her there. Norma admitted to using erythropoietin (EPO) and the real winner, Nadia Brehmen, received her title of Ironman World Champion.
It was Nadia's fifth time winning that honour and she did not appreciate missing out on the celebration at the finish line, and the post-race awards the following night. But what was done was done. There was no repeating that particular moment.
Triathletes don’t earn that much. Winning an Ironman race outside of Hawaii gets them no more than US$10,000. It’s hard enough to win one, let alone a second one during a year. The Hawaii Ironman, on the other hand, pays the winner US$100,000 – both male and female. The added prestige helps increase sponsor money too, so for many long distance triathletes Hawaii is the most important race of the season. Winning it is a big deal.
The race has only been held 29 times*. The gap between the winning times of the men and the women has narrowed but it had never before come even close enough for people to imagine one day a woman would take the overall win.
Yet, that is exactly what Tara Wiesner has done today.
Instead of the usual party in an emotional high-energy atmosphere at the finish line, there was the sound of polite clapping filled with disbelief at what spectators had just witnessed. A woman broke the tape first. Before any man.
It had happened in the Life Time Fitness triathlon, where Bianca Lindsay came out the overall winner two years in a row in the three years the pros raced in an equalizer format in which men and women were given a handicap intended to even out their starting time differences.
And Miranda Johnson once beat all the men home at a regular half Ironman event. Without disrespect to the men who raced there or devaluing Miranda’s superb time there, but it wasn’t like she raced against the elite of the elites like Patrick Road and Neil Strong.
Today’s first man was a couple of minutes away. His arrival at the finish helped announcer Mark recover. “Here we have the first man approaching." Mark halted for a minute, because it sounded so bizarre. Then he pulled himself together.
“Christian McDougal, from Australia, has finally overcome the cramping issues he suffered in the previous three years and shown that he can talk the talk, and walk the walk.”
Christian looked pained. He, too, seemed incredulous as he lifted the tape, knowing that this tape had been lifted less than five minutes before—by a female. He was chicked at the biggest event of the year. That probably wasn’t how he had imagined his Kona victory, which he always had believed would come one day. He seemed a bit angry too, probably at the fact that someone had stolen the spotlight from him in such a major way.
Who was this Tara Wiesner anyway? Could she really have won outright? How could she be so fast? Had the prospect of winning—the prestige and the money—led someone to cheat? Surely she’d know she would be tested. This race was the biggest triathlon deal of the entire season.
Tara sat on a chair behind the finish line. She looked exhausted but very content. Tara didn’t appear shocked as most other people did. It seemed like her incredible victory wasn’t as big of a deal to her as to most others. A few journalists started making their way towards her.
They looked unlike reporters today, shy and unsure of the questions to ask. The usual post-race questions would have very unusual responses, no matter how there were phrased. The reporters waited, hoping someone else would ask the first question. Nobody seemed keen to be that person, another far cry from the usual shouting match with the loudest question asked usually being the first one answered.
Most of the reporters here had never even heard of this pro triathlete before today, and had to guess at the spelling of her name. So Megan decided to take the lead. “Tara, congratulations on your … incredible… performance. How does it feel to win this race outright?”
To be continued...
But in 2005, after quitting my job as a reporter for Bloomberg News after more than seven years to take time off and compete in three Ironmans in Australia, Germany and New Zealand respectively over a period of 11 months, I felt inspired to try fiction.
What if a woman were to win the Ironman World Championships outright?
The idea was sparked in part by the performances of women ultrarunners Ann Trason and Pam Reed.
I began writing, using both my vivid imagination and my experience with the sport I’d been involved in as an age grouper since 1999. After creating 12,747 words I stopped.
Two years later, I was in Kona to watch my partner Tim compete in his first Ironman World Championships. That was 2007 and I also watched a then unknown win the woman's championships title. She's since become a household name, having three successive wins in Hawaii. This Saturday she's poised to make it four.
At the time of my first fiction attempt with the working title Ironwoman in September and October 2005, the fastest Ironman time by a female was 8:50:53 set by Paula Newby-Fraser in Roth in 1994; this record was not bettered until the Dutch Yvonne van Vlerken did so in July 2008—a whopping 14 years later.
Since then women have sped up though none more so than Chrissie Wellington who has made Ironman even more exciting, as she redefines what’s possible—not just for women but also for men. At Roth in July this year, she improved the fastest Ironman time for women to 8:19.
Now women are within half an hour of the men. The men’s Ironman record is 7:50:27, set by Belgium’s Luc van Lierde in 1997, also in Roth. When I saw a Daily Mail article on the Xtri.com website yesterday, in which Chrissie is quoted as saying that it is only a matter of time before the women beat the men, I thought of what I had written five years ago, revisited it and decided to publish this unfinished draft in short instalments, before fiction becomes reality.
I want to re-emphasize that I wrote this two full years before I, and most people in the sport, had heard about Chrissie. I want to make clear that the character I chose is entirely fictional and has absolutely nothing to do with any specific female triathlete.
At the time I simply wanted to explore a story about something that seemed impossible—a woman taking the overall crown in Kona and what impact that would have on the discussion of the sport. My inspiration was the eternal quest for improvement in sport, as in humanity.
I believe that in the young sport of triathlon, Ironman, athletes have so much more potential. And in 2005 I believed that women particularly had a lot more to offer to this sport. I still do.
I wanted to explore how we look at athletic performance, especially that of women. It was only 1972 that women were first allowed to run the Boston Marathon, the world's oldest, and only 1984 until women could compete in the marathon at the Olympic Games.
I also wanted to explore how our perceptions of performances have been cast into doubt by the rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs in any sport. Most of all I wanted to explore how I, as both a writer and an avid endurance athlete, would approach the subject.
If I let her win in the opening scene, would I as the author allow her to be a superb athlete, a hero, or would I turn her into a villain?
Disclaimer: Although inspired in part by true incidents, the following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event. And I repeat, I wrote this draft in 2005.
Ironwoman (part I)
“She is about to do what no other woman has ever done. And something only a few men have done. This is history in the making. This is … this is … She is breaking the tape now. She has done it.”
Mark Rally, the Ironman World Championships announcer, then falls silent for a moment. He seems unsure of what to say next, something that rarely happens. He must be thinking what most other people at the finish line of the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, are.
How can a woman win this race, this exhausting triathlon in one of the most humid places on earth that takes the fastest as many hours as most people’s work day in the office? Is it possible for a woman to beat the best male endurance triathletes in the world without any help from performance-enhancing drugs? Should they expend energy celebrating this unbelievable win?
It wouldn’t be the first time that a triathlete has been found guilty of drug use to go that extra bit faster. In fact, it happened last year when Norma Klaus crossed the line as first female and was crowned accordingly before a positive drug test showed it wasn't simply hard training that had gotten her there. Norma admitted to using erythropoietin (EPO) and the real winner, Nadia Brehmen, received her title of Ironman World Champion.
It was Nadia's fifth time winning that honour and she did not appreciate missing out on the celebration at the finish line, and the post-race awards the following night. But what was done was done. There was no repeating that particular moment.
Triathletes don’t earn that much. Winning an Ironman race outside of Hawaii gets them no more than US$10,000. It’s hard enough to win one, let alone a second one during a year. The Hawaii Ironman, on the other hand, pays the winner US$100,000 – both male and female. The added prestige helps increase sponsor money too, so for many long distance triathletes Hawaii is the most important race of the season. Winning it is a big deal.
The race has only been held 29 times*. The gap between the winning times of the men and the women has narrowed but it had never before come even close enough for people to imagine one day a woman would take the overall win.
Yet, that is exactly what Tara Wiesner has done today.
Instead of the usual party in an emotional high-energy atmosphere at the finish line, there was the sound of polite clapping filled with disbelief at what spectators had just witnessed. A woman broke the tape first. Before any man.
It had happened in the Life Time Fitness triathlon, where Bianca Lindsay came out the overall winner two years in a row in the three years the pros raced in an equalizer format in which men and women were given a handicap intended to even out their starting time differences.
And Miranda Johnson once beat all the men home at a regular half Ironman event. Without disrespect to the men who raced there or devaluing Miranda’s superb time there, but it wasn’t like she raced against the elite of the elites like Patrick Road and Neil Strong.
Today’s first man was a couple of minutes away. His arrival at the finish helped announcer Mark recover. “Here we have the first man approaching." Mark halted for a minute, because it sounded so bizarre. Then he pulled himself together.
“Christian McDougal, from Australia, has finally overcome the cramping issues he suffered in the previous three years and shown that he can talk the talk, and walk the walk.”
Christian looked pained. He, too, seemed incredulous as he lifted the tape, knowing that this tape had been lifted less than five minutes before—by a female. He was chicked at the biggest event of the year. That probably wasn’t how he had imagined his Kona victory, which he always had believed would come one day. He seemed a bit angry too, probably at the fact that someone had stolen the spotlight from him in such a major way.
Who was this Tara Wiesner anyway? Could she really have won outright? How could she be so fast? Had the prospect of winning—the prestige and the money—led someone to cheat? Surely she’d know she would be tested. This race was the biggest triathlon deal of the entire season.
Tara sat on a chair behind the finish line. She looked exhausted but very content. Tara didn’t appear shocked as most other people did. It seemed like her incredible victory wasn’t as big of a deal to her as to most others. A few journalists started making their way towards her.
They looked unlike reporters today, shy and unsure of the questions to ask. The usual post-race questions would have very unusual responses, no matter how there were phrased. The reporters waited, hoping someone else would ask the first question. Nobody seemed keen to be that person, another far cry from the usual shouting match with the loudest question asked usually being the first one answered.
Most of the reporters here had never even heard of this pro triathlete before today, and had to guess at the spelling of her name. So Megan decided to take the lead. “Tara, congratulations on your … incredible… performance. How does it feel to win this race outright?”
To be continued...
October 07, 2010
Introduction to Ironwoman, a novel
As an author of three non-fiction books and a soon-to-be-published collection of poems, I have written very little fiction, and certainly none that has been published.
But in 2005, after quitting my job as a reporter for Bloomberg News after more than seven years to take time off and compete in three Ironmans in Australia, Germany and New Zealand respectively over a period of 11 months, I felt inspired to try fiction.
What if a woman were to win the Ironman World Championships outright?
The idea was sparked in part by the performances of women ultrarunners Ann Trason and Pam Reed.
I began writing, using both my vivid imagination and my experience with the sport I’d been involved in as an age grouper since 1999. After creating 12,747 words I stopped.
Two years later, I was in Kona to watch my partner Tim compete in his first Ironman World Championships. That was 2007 and I also watched a then unknown win the woman's championships title. She's since become a household name, having three successive wins in Hawaii. This Saturday she's poised to make it four.
At the time of my first fiction attempt with the working title Ironwoman in September and October 2005, the fastest Ironman time by a female was 8:50:53 set by Paula Newby-Fraser in Roth in 1994; this record was not bettered until the Dutch Yvonne van Vlerken did so in July 2008—a whopping 14 years later.
Since then women have sped up though none more so than Chrissie Wellington who has made Ironman even more exciting, as she redefines what’s possible—not just for women but also for men. At Roth in July this year, she improved the fastest Ironman time for women to 8:19.
Now women are within half an hour of the men. The men’s Ironman record is 7:50:27, set by Belgium’s Luc van Lierde in 1997, also in Roth. When I saw a Daily Mail article on the Xtri.com website yesterday, in which Chrissie is quoted as saying that it is only a matter of time before the women beat the men, I thought of what I had written five years ago, revisited it and decided to publish this unfinished draft in short instalments, before fiction becomes reality.
I want to re-emphasize that I wrote this two full years before I, and most people in the sport, had heard about Chrissie. I want to make clear that the character I chose is entirely fictional and has absolutely nothing to do with any specific female triathlete.
At the time I simply wanted to explore a story about something that seemed impossible—a woman taking the overall crown in Kona and what impact that would have on the discussion of the sport. My inspiration was the eternal quest for improvement in sport, as in humanity.
I believe that in the young sport of triathlon, Ironman, athletes have so much more potential. And in 2005 I believed that women particularly had a lot more to offer to this sport. I still do.
I wanted to explore how we look at athletic performance, especially that of women. It was only 1972 that women were first allowed to run the Boston Marathon, the world's oldest, and only 1984 until women could compete in the marathon at the Olympic Games.
I also wanted to explore how our perceptions of performances have been cast into doubt by the rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs in any sport. Most of all I wanted to explore how I, as both a writer and an avid female endurance athlete, would approach the subject.
If I let her win in the opening scene, would I as the author allow her to be a superb athlete, a hero, or would I turn her into a villain?
Disclaimer: Although inspired in part by true incidents, the following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event. And I repeat, I wrote this draft in 2005—long before I had heard of a woman who I believe has the possibility to turn my fiction into non-fiction.
But in 2005, after quitting my job as a reporter for Bloomberg News after more than seven years to take time off and compete in three Ironmans in Australia, Germany and New Zealand respectively over a period of 11 months, I felt inspired to try fiction.
What if a woman were to win the Ironman World Championships outright?
The idea was sparked in part by the performances of women ultrarunners Ann Trason and Pam Reed.
I began writing, using both my vivid imagination and my experience with the sport I’d been involved in as an age grouper since 1999. After creating 12,747 words I stopped.
Two years later, I was in Kona to watch my partner Tim compete in his first Ironman World Championships. That was 2007 and I also watched a then unknown win the woman's championships title. She's since become a household name, having three successive wins in Hawaii. This Saturday she's poised to make it four.
At the time of my first fiction attempt with the working title Ironwoman in September and October 2005, the fastest Ironman time by a female was 8:50:53 set by Paula Newby-Fraser in Roth in 1994; this record was not bettered until the Dutch Yvonne van Vlerken did so in July 2008—a whopping 14 years later.
Since then women have sped up though none more so than Chrissie Wellington who has made Ironman even more exciting, as she redefines what’s possible—not just for women but also for men. At Roth in July this year, she improved the fastest Ironman time for women to 8:19.
Now women are within half an hour of the men. The men’s Ironman record is 7:50:27, set by Belgium’s Luc van Lierde in 1997, also in Roth. When I saw a Daily Mail article on the Xtri.com website yesterday, in which Chrissie is quoted as saying that it is only a matter of time before the women beat the men, I thought of what I had written five years ago, revisited it and decided to publish this unfinished draft in short instalments, before fiction becomes reality.
I want to re-emphasize that I wrote this two full years before I, and most people in the sport, had heard about Chrissie. I want to make clear that the character I chose is entirely fictional and has absolutely nothing to do with any specific female triathlete.
At the time I simply wanted to explore a story about something that seemed impossible—a woman taking the overall crown in Kona and what impact that would have on the discussion of the sport. My inspiration was the eternal quest for improvement in sport, as in humanity.
I believe that in the young sport of triathlon, Ironman, athletes have so much more potential. And in 2005 I believed that women particularly had a lot more to offer to this sport. I still do.
I wanted to explore how we look at athletic performance, especially that of women. It was only 1972 that women were first allowed to run the Boston Marathon, the world's oldest, and only 1984 until women could compete in the marathon at the Olympic Games.
I also wanted to explore how our perceptions of performances have been cast into doubt by the rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs in any sport. Most of all I wanted to explore how I, as both a writer and an avid female endurance athlete, would approach the subject.
If I let her win in the opening scene, would I as the author allow her to be a superb athlete, a hero, or would I turn her into a villain?
Disclaimer: Although inspired in part by true incidents, the following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event. And I repeat, I wrote this draft in 2005—long before I had heard of a woman who I believe has the possibility to turn my fiction into non-fiction.
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