Pro file: Chris McCormack

Photo courtesy Scott Fairchild at Fairchild Management

Chris McCormack is one of the most decorated men in triathlon. He has been racing for 17 years, coming up through the juniors racing men like Normann Stadler and Craig Alexander. McCormack has won world titles from ITU to Ironman, as well as hallmark races like Quelle Challenge Roth, Wildflower, and Escape from Alcatraz. The potpourri of big-name achievements on his résumé is no accident. As a fledgling tri-geek in Australia, the adolescent McCormack sat down with his best friend, Sean Maroney, and made a list of the races that Macca planned to win in his career. They based the list on the achievements of their heroes like Mark Allen, Greg Welch, and Mike Pigg, whose races they taped and watched over and over. What races they couldn't watch, they read about in the magazines. These races took place in exotic lands like Europe and America. When Macca was growing up, triathletes weren't specialists; they raced everything from Olympic distance to Ironman in a season, every season. Thus, Macca's list included conquests from all over the triathlon spectrum.

Macca has improved his cycling in recent years to keep up
with the trend of Ironman becoming a cyclist's race.
Photo courtesy Scott Fairchild at Fairchild Management

As Macca grew up and his ITU career gained momentum, the list that he'd written with Sean when he was a boy got buried. But after a rough season where he wasn't selected for the 2000 Australian Olympic team and his mother died of breast cancer in the same year, Macca thought of retiring. Instead, he moved to the US with his future wife and dug out the old list of his boyhood dreams. On it were races like Wildflower, Escape from Alcatraz, the San Diego International triathlon, the Chicago Triathlon, and the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii.

Just before Macca broke Mike Pigg's record of three victories in Alcatraz, Sean passed away in a car accident. After a decade of sitting in hotel rooms geeking out together about which one of their idols had won the same trophies as Macca, Chris now found himself without his training partner and best friend as he made the transition to Ironman.

By 2004, the only race left on Macca and Sean's list was the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. Year after year, Macca showed up in Hawaii talking big, then swallowing his words as his race fell apart in the heat. In 2002, he dropped out. In 2003, he finished 53rd. He DNFed again in 2004. At the 2004 race, however, there was a Hollywood-like twist of fate, as Macca's idol Mark Allen was in the car that picked him up off the course. In a Hollywood telling, the corners of the screen would be foggy like a dream sequence (or from Macca's fatigue) as McCormack asked the almost mythical guru-like Allen what he could do to win the race. Allen had also tried and failed for years in Hawaii before finally cracking the win. The best triathlete in history gave the soon-to-be best triathlete of our time the key that would lead to a change in his luck. Allen advised McCormack to race fewer Ironmans during the year to save himself for Hawaii. Macca took the advice to heart, and in 2005 he began his climb to the top. In 2005, he broke into the top ten, and in 2006 he finished second, only 73 seconds behind his career-long nemesis Normann Stadler. Finally, in 2007 Macca put together the race of his life and cruised into the finish line in Kona in first place. Before he crossed the tape, Macca stopped and pointed to the sky to show Sean that he was dedicating this race to him. When Macca stepped accross the tape, he pointed to the sky again with a grin on his face and tears in his throat, and dropped to the ground.

Photo courtesy Scott Fairchild at Fairchild Management

As a student of the sport, Macca knew better than anybody how rare it is to defend in Kona. He trained dilligently in 2008. He went to the labs to analyze his sweat rate, rode in a wind tunnel to tweak his bike position so he could keep up with German bike freaks like Stadler, and he upped his running speed to fend off strong runners like Craig Alexander. However, not long into the bike in the 2008 race, Macca snapped a shifter cable on his bike. When the race mechanics told him that it would take 15 minutes to fix, Macca told them to forget it.

Although his to-do list is finished and the 8 1/2 x 11 list is hanging framed in his pool room, Macca still has big triathlon dreams of matching or bettering Mark Allen's record of six Hawaii victories. Once he sets his mind to something, Macca is unstoppable. He trains with a dilligence and scientific eye for detail akin to Lance Armstrong, and like Armstrong, he will be very, very, very hard to beat. Expect him to be pushing the pace in the lead throughout the race on Saturday.

Chris “Macca” McCormack

Nationality: Australian
Age: 36
Career highlights:

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