Thanks Dan for the story on the front page about Paula Newby-Fraser’s 1992 campaign that set new extraordinary standards in endurance sports competition that have rarely been eclipsed.
People have to remember that back then, this was all really still new. We were all still exploring the limits of swim/bike/run and what could be done.
In some ways, compared to today it was terribly unsophisticated. You trained hard and long, and on ace day, just tended to see how long you could last! It wasn’t perfect, but some performances from that earlier era of the sport have stood the test of time.
I still consider her #1 in ironman racing of all time. As I recall, she had a stress fracture in her foot/ankle going into Kona in 92. Due from the busy season I assume.
i enjoyed the article as well. I think the sport has a great history, not just in amazing performances, but also highlighting the technology that was raced.
It doesn’t appear in the photos with that article but didn’t she have a really unusual crank-set at some point? Maybe some kind of extra gearing for the 24" wheels?
I believe it is in that 1st photo, you just cannot see it. She rode a Hamilton 24" wheel bike that had what i would describe as rotating pedals. It was an extension welded onto the pedal that allowed you to adjust your effective crank length with the pitch of your foot. So for more powerful phases you could adjust to take advantage. They were very heavy as i recall. My take was that they did no harm and may have had some small advantage in Paula’s case. They never caught on but the principal is still explored with oval chainrings and such these days.
The big thing that i think was there was her position. If you look at it as compared to todays womens, she is better than 90% of them, and as good as the best. We all rode 650c wheel bikes back then and many played with the 24" wheel, mostly the women. Paula set the bike course record on that bike and i can vouch that it was not AG man assisted. She was just a super gifted negative splitter and had the best heat genetics of anyone i ever came across. I was the worst of course, so at some point i decided i would just race with her, sitting 10m off the back. I would get to witness just how strong she was and how alone she would ride, going right through most the AG men. IT actually became hard for me to finish the bike with her, and i would be mostly shot from the heat by then. She would get off and then proceed to pick off all the AG men and a got portion of the pro men on the run, just getting faster and faster with each mile. IT was like it was 60 degrees outside to her and just some big training day. Even broke into the mens podium one year getting 11th overall(podium used to be top 15 for money spots, now only 10). That was the greatest Hawaii womens race of all time i figure, pretty amazing when you think a woman almost got top 10. No one has ever come close to that accomplishment in hawaii…
And that record she set of 4;48+ i believe is still the record in my book. It was only broken by a few seconds, but her transition time was included in that time, while they are backed out now. We just used to have 3 times after the race, swim/bike/run, now they add two more, T1 and T2. Makes a few other splits like Dave and Mark’s runs in the 89 race even more impressive when you back out a couple minutes or so from the published splits…
Just to return to one of my points, modern day folk have no idea how experimental and pioneering this all was back then - not the gear and the equipment, although that is of interest to, but the whole training side of it it and how far and how hard you could push yourself with S/B/R. There was no manual or books. Coaches where just starting to get a grip on it. Most of us trained ourselves. HRM’s where about as advanced as the training tools got.