Originally published at: Olympian and World Champion Andy Potts “Officially” Retires from Racing - Slowtwitch News
Photo: Eric Wynn
He’s one of a select few who have won at the highest levels of draft-legal racing and also an IRONMAN. Throw in the fact that he also won an IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship, and the list of his peers becomes even more exclusive. Consider that he was still winning pro races at 45, and you see why Andy Potts retires from competitive triathlon racing with legendary status.
Potts’ international racing career started in 1993 and saw him earn podium finishes on five continents. He raced in the Olympics and the Paralympics, along with 23 world championships. His storied career included more than 60 professional and elite titles including: eight IRONMAN wins, 32 half-distance victories, six Escape from Alcatraz titles, and two World Cup wins. He won the Pan Am Games in 2007, the same year he took the IRONMAN 70.3 world title. He finished in the top-10 in Kona seven times and was fourth twice. And, in case you’re wondering why he got so much coverage at events, he was first out of the water in almost 90 percent of the races he competed in.
Photo: Eric Wynn
Swimming Background
Long renowned as one of the sport’s premier swimmers, Potts came by his prowess leading into T1 honestly. His first international podium came at a swimming event in Paris in 1994, where he won the 200 and 400 IM races, along with the 1,500 m free. Two years later he would finish fourth in the 400 IM at the Olympic trials – his fellow University of Michigan teammates, Tom Dolan and Eric Namesnik, would go on to take the gold and silver medals at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
After his university swim career came to an end in 1999, Potts would run track for Michigan in 2000 as a walk-on.
“Why are you letting a swimmer beat you,” Potts ribbed any of the team members he managed to outrun that year.
After a “small hiatus” from sports, Potts made the seemingly logical step to triathlon in the fall of 2002, and it wasn’t long before he was excelling in his new athletic endeavor. He qualified for the 2004 Athens Games, and in 2006 finished third in the overall World Cup rankings (what we now know as the World Triathlon Championship Series). Despite that success, Potts was starting to realize that draft-legal racing might not be his best triathlon event. He cites the World Cup race in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland, Canada as a great example of what he was going through – he often felt like he was the best “triathlete” in a draft-legal race, but that wasn’t enough to get him the win.
“I broke away in the swim, only to get caught on the bike,” he remembered. “I managed to break away on the bike, but then got caught on the run by Javier Gomez, Simon Whitfield and Chris Gemmell and would finish fourth. ‘What else do I have to do,’ I thought to myself. The writing was on the wall – my skill set might be towards non-drafting.”
Photo: Eric Wynn
A year later he would prove himself prescient as he sprinted past Argentina’s Oscar Galindez in a dramatic finish in Clearwater, taking the 70.3 world title. He continued to compete in draft-legal races for a few more years, but by 2008 he was on the start line in Kona, where he would make his IRONMAN debut with an impressive seventh-place finish. It was the beginning of a long-string of Kona success which was somewhat ironic considering that Potts hadn’t started the sport, like so many do, with dreams of success on the Big Island.
“When I first started doing triathlon, my mindset was ‘who wants to do anything for eight hours,'” he laughs. “As I got more exposed to long-distance sports, I kept wondering what humans can do.”
Curiousity
It’s that “wondering” that has driven so much of Potts’ career, and kept him competing for so long.
“I love triathlon and I love the opportunity to see what’s possible,” Potts said. “I wanted to know, can we do this? Can humans continue to be at a peak, aerobic, world-class level into their 40s? I was willing to find out by putting in the work.”
In addition to doing the work, Potts also set extremely high standards for himself, so that what others would see as huge success, for him was a level of failure. He acknowledges, though, that his use of the word “failure” needs to be quantified.
Photo: Eric Wynn
“The game changes with Father Time, and it’s hard to continue to risk and fail when you’ve done some special things,” he said. His version of “failure” involves being willing to “take a risk in your preparation and set a high bar and not achieve it.”
“If you’re continually curious you can do amazing things,” he continued.
Potts also has an excellent ability to turn challenges into opportunities. After helping the American triathlon team qualify three athletes for the 2008 Games in Beijing, Potts finished second to three different people in the three American Olympic qualifying races. Instead of competing in his second Games, he was the alternate.
“Every success, setback and turn in circumstances offered me an opportunity,” Potts said. “Luckily enough for me, I always had great coaching, council and friendship from brilliant people I trusted to guide me along the way.”
That guidance would lead him to Kona that year. Thirteen years later, Potts would grab another opportunity and guide American Kyle Coon to a fifth-place finish at the Tokyo Paralympic Games. In between there were all those full- and half-distance wins, not to mention the regular appearances at the front of any race he entered. Along the way he and wife Lisa have brought up their children Boston and Sloane, too.
Desi Linden and Andy Potts. Photo: Eric Wynn
Opening a New Door
Potts’ last win came at IRONMAN 70.3 Ecuador in 2022 (he would turn 46 at the end of that year) and, in 2023, he raced three times. He didn’t compete at all in 2024.
“It is time for me to officially retire from professional racing and open a new door to an opportunity that has knocked too loudly to ignore any longer,” the 48-year-old said. “I have cherished every moment of victory and defeat, and none of it would have been possible without the support I received along the way.”
We’ll have to wait to find out what that “opportunity” is, but you can be sure that Andy Potts will be taking it on with the gusto, determination, drive and the class that has made him a consummate pro for so many years.
Photo: Eric Wynn
