In His Day, Dave Scott Was Truly “The Man”
By Kevin Mackinnon for Ironmanlive.com on Tue, May 6th 2003 (11:46 AM).

He set the standard of greatness for all Ironman champions to follow. Despite his “unique” style of running, his relentless intensity carried him right to the pinnacle of triathlon.

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His nickname was simple: The Man.

No other athlete’s mere presence at the pier at Kailua-Kona made the rest of the field think about how good second place would be.

He was the first inductee to the Ironman Hall of Fame … putting another person in there ahead of Dave Scott would defy any sense of justice our sport might have.

Dave Scott’s storied career at the Ironman Triathlon World Championship is enough to justify the hagiographic way we tend to talk about him. But what truly makes him so popular in the sport is the fact that we can all relate to him in some way, while at the same time holding in awe the amazing feats of athleticism he gave us over a 17-year-stretch at the Ironman (really, a 22-year-stretch, but more on that later!)

Dave Scott is the Ironman triathlete we all would like to be. Never the most talented athlete in the field, Scott won a record six Ironman World Championships because he simply trained harder than everyone else, and when it came to race day in Hawaii, bore down with a relentless intensity that seemingly willed win after win.

Growing up in Davis, California, Scott was a “jock.” In junior high, he played basketball, football and water polo, swam, and was the junior champion at the local golf club.

Once he got to college, life began to revolve around swimming and water polo, and the incredible training drive that would eventually make him an Ironman World Champion really came to the fore.

“I was always working out harder and longer than everyone else,” he says. “I would get in before everyone else, and stay in after. I would get everyone to do bar dips and push-ups after class. “I was a workout machine.”

Augmenting all the swim training was lots of running. Davis is a biking town, so Scott, like just about everyone else, used his bike to get around.

(If there need be any proof how much time Scott spent in a pool, one only needs to find out where he met his wife, Anna. A swimmer of note herself, the two hooked up in the pool at UC Davis!)

These days, people like Scott find themselves gravitating towards triathlon. Back in the mid 70s, though, triathlon wasn’t where it is today.

There were multi-sport events, though, which is what led the train-a-holic Dave Scott to do a few swim/run events in 1975, leading up to his first triathlon. He would finish second in that inaugural event in Foster City . . . he actually thought he’d won until he saw the results and learned that some 15-year-old named Scott Molina had beaten him by four minutes!

His first foray into the sport simply whetted his appetite. Scott then ventured to a triathlon event in San Francisco. (An interview with Dave Scott is always amazing in terms of the details he remembers. As he recounts the story, he provides the exact date of the race … November 20^th.) His prize for winning the nine-mile bike, four-mile run and 1,500m swim race (in 53-degree water no less!) . . . a turkey.

Fast forward to 1980. Now a many-time winner of the Waikiki Rough Water Swim, Scott has participated in a few multi-sport events over the years, but his focus has remained on swimming – not only as an athlete but also as a coach.

“Back in 1974, I was coaching age-group kids, and a few of the parents asked me to coach them,” he recalls. “We went from eight to 25 participants in a couple of months, 25 to 60 in half a year, and over a hundred in a year. Four years into the program we had 400.”

He had heard about the Ironman while competing at the Waikiki swim, and figured the event might be an interesting challenge. He soon figured out it was going to be more of a challenge than he had originally thought.

“I thought it was a three-day event,” he says.

Scott embarked on an ambitious training plan to prepare for his first Ironman.

“It (the training) was heroic at that time, but a few years later everyone was doing that much,” he says. “I was swimming 4000 to 6000 meters a day, cycling 250 miles a week, and running 40 miles a week.

A few months before his debut Ironman, he did a “test.”

“I swam 5000 meters, did a 103-mile bike tour as a race, and ran 20 miles afterwards,” he says. “It was a really hot day in the summer, and I felt like I could keep going. I knew then it wasn’t going to be a survival skill, it was going to be a race.”

That one day’s revelation possibly changed the sport as we know it today.

After leading the swim, and making a wrong turn into the women’s change room, Scott’s friend Pat Feeney literally taped his feet to his pedals – “I hadn’t ever worn bike shoes, and they were terribly uncomfortable,” Scott says.

The discomfort from the shoes was nothing compared to the pain that began once the lack of circulation to his feet began to affect him! Scott maintained his lead, though, and began the run well ahead of the rest of his competition. Fearing he might have lost too much weight going into the 10-mile weigh station on the run and would be pulled from the race, Feeney handed Scott a huge bottle of water while he was on the scales. Despite all that, Scott put together an impressive 9:24:33 Ironman – which was almost two hours faster than Tom Warren the previous year!

That day the Ironman stopped being simply a test of endurance. It became a race … and we can all thank Dave Scott for the change!

It also marked the beginning of the “Dave Scott” era in the Ironman, which would encompass much of the 1980s.

He would win five more titles during that time frame. He would finish second in 1982. Then, along with Mark Allen, he ended the 80s by putting on the greatest show the sport has ever seen.

The “Ironwar” finally saw Mark Allen get the win that he had coveted for so many years. After being bested by Scott so many times, on this day, Allen was determined to simply shadow his nemesis for as long as he could. Scott would press relentlessly during the swim, while Allen hung on for dear life. Scott maintained an equally relentless pace on the bike, with Allen once again hanging on behind.

It was on the run that Scott wishes he had been a bit more aggressive.

“The way the Aid Stations are set up, if you’re running on the outside you have to slow down or speed up,” he remembers. “Mark was on the outside for first few aid stations, and then made an aggressive move to get the inside point.”

That left Scott with the task of surging to get back next to Allen at every aid station.

“When Mark made his move, could I have stayed with him if I hadn't done that?” Scott asks. “I don’t know, but if I could have done anything differently, that's what I would have changed.”

Both men would break Scott’s course record on that day, and to this day, Ironman enthusiasts remember that race as one of the greatest days in the sport.

Scott thinks that his performance in 1994 might be his best, though. That was another second place finish, but considering he was 40-years-old at the time, second place in the world was pretty amazing! Two years later, Scott would return to Kona once again, and finish an impressive fifth overall, despite a “poor swim and bike.” (His words, not ours!)

Five years later, there was one last foray into the Ironman. The 47-year-old Scott arrived in Kona as fit as ever in 2001. Back problems due to some last minute bike changes forced him out of the race, though, so we never got to see the top-10 finish so many had predicted.

Will he race the Ironman again? Scott says no.

“My biggest reservation is motivation,” he says. “My standards are pretty high, so I'd have to have a pretty long build up. I couldn't do it in just a couple of months. With two surgeries I'm not sure if my knee would hold up, either. Sometimes when I'm running it feels like my knee is going to shatter or break. I'm always aware of it.”

Seven months shy of his 50^th birthday, Scott is more than busy keeping up with his three children’s activities, too. Don’t count him completely out of the sport, though. He’s already up to two-hour-and-twenty-minute runs on that knee!

No wonder he’s called “The Man.”