For Ironman Triathlon Finishers, His Words Were as Precious as a Medal

In an interview with The New York Times, Reilly talked about his undying admiration for athletes and his appreciation for the hundreds of thousands of competitors who responded to his words.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Did you know that your off-the-cuff declaration would stick the way it has?

I wasn’t staying up all night saying, “Oh, gosh, I need a signature, I need to have a call like an announcer says a home run or a soccer goal.” I didn’t care about that stuff. I cared about making an athlete feel like a million dollars, and I found it in those four words. And I knew I wasn’t going to stop saying it if I knew it had an impact. All of a sudden, it just clicked.

One of the greatest things you can do in a life is to help enhance someone else’s life whether you know them or not. I get to do that 2,500 times an event. I get to reward them with the words that I believe they want to hear, and their family wants to hear, and their friends want to hear.

People see their family and friends transform themselves into somebody else, and those four words are not an endorsement of what they did that day, it’s a certification of what they became.

What did an average Ironman race day look like for you?

I would naturally wake up at 3:30 in the morning and would be at the site at four. I’d go and talk to the athletes, and my goal for the morning was to be a sense of calm. It’s 5 in the morning, you can’t be playing AC/DC and screaming at them. You have to get them in the water, and that can be the hardest part, getting them started on time.

Then I’m at a hot corner on the bike route and try to get a hot corner on the run. I get myself to the finish line 30 minutes before the professionals come in. So I go in and set up and say to myself, “Let’s rock and roll until midnight. Let’s take care of everybody.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/sports/ironman-mike-reilly.html