On Saturday, 56 of the best triathletes in the world will be competing in the pinnacle event of the sport, the VinFast Ironman World Championship, showcasing their endurance and competitive spirit as they swim, bike and run over a 140.6-mile grueling course around West Hawai‘i.
But the field in Kona on the Big Island also will include about 2,400 amateur athletes who also are inspiring, including a man with terminal cancer, a 26-year-old double amputee, a man with post-traumatic stress syndrome, and a father who will tow and push his son with Cerebral Palsy.
Six Ironman Ambassador Athletes were on a stage at Hale Halāwai on Ali‘i Drive, currently home to the Ironman Village, to share their incredible journeys with an audience baking in the Kona heat. Long-time Ironman announcer Joanne Murphy asked them on Thursday about their struggles, successes, training and motivation.
Sitting on the far left of the stage was double amputee Billy Monger, 25, of Great Britain. The former race car driver lost his legs after a crash when he was 17 years old. He is competing Saturday to raise funds for the UK nonprofit Comic Relief, which provides funding to organizations that are working on projects to stamp out poverty.
Monger finished the Ironman 70.3 Weymouth in the United Kingdom, which is half the distance of a full Ironman race. The Kona race will be his first attempt at the 140.6-mile distance.
His dive into the endurance sport and journey started in 2021 when he did a 140-mile endurance challenge in four days, raising $3 million pounds. For the past year, he has set his sites on Kona.
“So there’s a little bit of extra nerves that I haven’t done a full Ironman before (or even a marathon), but I’m just super excited,” he said. “This is going to hold firm in my memory for years to come. … Just being on the island, meeting so many incredible people, the sense of community that I felt out here, and everyone wanting and wishing me to do well.”
Monger hopes to break the double-amputee record set by Roderick Sewell, an ex Paralympic swimmer, who finished an Ironman race in 2019 on prosthetic legs in 16 hours and 26 minutes.
While the “competitor within me means that I can’t just come here and want to finish,” he also said during the process of training for Kona he realized it ultimately is about the journey.
“I remember when I first started in October of last year, I could barely run 5 kilometers,” he said. “I was getting sores from wearing my prosthetics. And to think where I’m at now and what I’m going to be trying to attempt to do on Saturday, I feel like I’ve already won from just going on this journey.”
Beau Jones, 38, of Australia never dreamed of being at the Ironman World Championship as an athlete. When he was nearly 300 pounds, Jones was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder caused by almost losing his wife and son during a difficult birth.
After his diagnosis, Jones determined if he was going to be mentally healthy, he needed to be physically healthy. Enter Ironman, which is described as having the fittest humans in the world.
Jones became an Ironman in 2022 when he finished the Ironman Australia in Port Macquarie.
He also has been on a mission to ensure no man, no human, suffers in silence, founding Bottle.It, an organization that provides a space where people can share their mental health stories and the positive journeys out of depression.
“There are a lot of other foundations and movements that use negative statistics about suicide. And obviously we were aware the dark exists, but there was nothing in the place that promotes the positive and … a bit of a pathway forward out of depression,” said Jones, who is being supported in Kona by his wife Ali and son Duke.
American father and son duo Jeff and Johnny Agar made their first attempt at the Ironman World Championship in Kona in 2016. They are back this year to finish what they started after missing the bike cut-off.
Jeff Agar said his son has done amazing things that were never expected after being born 11 weeks premature with Cerebral Palsy, an incurable neurological condition that affects movement and balance.
“We were told he would never walk,” Jeff Agar said. “But he’s had some iconic finishes walking across the finish line with his walker.”
Over the years, the pair have become a staple on the Ironman and Ironman 70.3 triathlon circuit. In 2022 in Maryland, they finally completed their first full Ironman.
“My family has always taught me that I have to overcome my challenges no matter what,” Johnny Agar said.
The seven years father and son have raced together has been a tremendous bonding experience, and provided much experience to understand their equipment, their abilities and what it takes to finish.
This includes not wearing underwear under bike shorts. Jeff Agar said he disregarded this advice in 2016 and paid for it with his skin rubbed raw in some parts.
“In 2016, we were chafing. In 2024, we’re chasing,” Johnny Agar said.
He joked that he also occasionally wonders why his son couldn’t have found a hobby in stamp collecting or baseball cards, “but he wanted to do endurance sports and be an athlete so we’re really appreciative of the support.”
American Dave McGillivray, now 70, always dreamed of being a professional athlete, but at 5 feet 4 he was always the last one picked in sports.
In 1978, he ran 3,452 miles in 80 days across the United States, from Medford, Ore., to his hometown of Medford, Mass. A year later he picked up an issue of Sports Illustrated with an article written by Barry McDermott about the Ironman.
” I read about it and I said: ‘Wow, right up my alley,'” McGillivray said.
McGillivray participated in the Ironman World Championship from 1983 to 1989. He also has directed or consulted on more than 1,400 mass participation events, including more than 150 triathlons, while raising millions of dollars for various causes.
But in 2013, he was diagnosed with severe coronary artery disease.
“I’m like, wait a minute, I’ve done all these Ironmans, I’ve run across the country, I’ve run all these marathons, and I have coronary artery disease? Like, that’s not fair,” he said.
McGillivray underwent open heart triple bypass surgery. At that time, he said he needed something to focus on and he came back to Kona in 2014 to race in Ironman. It was three years after he was inducted into the USA Triathlon Hall of Fame in 2011.
On Saturday, McGillivray is going for his 10th finish in Kona.
American Jonathan Pascual, 49, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2007 but was able to have it cut out. In 2022, he was diagnosed with stage IV of a rare form of cancer called mediastinal paraganglioma.
“It has extended all the way to my neck, blocking the big vessels and veins,” Pascual said. “It’s spread to my lungs, and it’s spread throughout my skeleton. And in fact, the cancer has eaten away at my bones that it broke.”
During the last two years, Pascual said he’s undergone treatment, radiation and targeted therapy to stabilize the cancer. But it’s been diagnosed as terminal.
“There is no cure. There is no bell for me to ring,” Pascual said. “However, I’ve always seen this as another endurance challenge.”
Despite suffering from shortness of breath and chronic pain, he is in Kona to fundraise for the F— Cancer Foundation and show his cancer is not a death sentence: “I’m here to challenge that. That notion is a myth.”
Pascual has completed 15 Ironman triathlons, but this is his first at the world championship. The swim will be the most challenging because when he’s in the prone position, blood pools around his face and neck, and even his tongue swells up making it harder and harder to breathe.
To keep his mind calm, he tries to be as relaxed as possible and flips over if he needs to take a deep breath.
If he can get through the swim, Pascual said he can manage the bike and the run since he’ll be able to breath better as soon as he’s upright.
“And as far as pain, hey, you know, we’re suckers for pain,” he said. “So we’ll deal with it.”
