|
OCTOBER 22,
2004:
With the exception of a short
(very short) bike ride, I spent Saturday glued to my computer
monitor watching the IronmanLive.com coverage of the race –
don't those guys test their cameras before the big day? I
work in the film industry. If we got to set and the cameras
didn't work there'd be quite a few guys who wouldn't be
working either. In the end it didn't matter – they caught the
important bits – namely Peter and Lori crossing the line in
front of all their competition. I had a shot of Jeager
sitting on my desk and raised it in salutation as both events
occurred. The woman's race was a nail bitter. The world
learned that Natasha was human and Peter learned what it was
to climb from the bottom and get back to the top again.
I wasn't surprised by his
win. I watched my friend waving to the crowd and listened to
the seven seconds of interview they granted him. I can say
with a fair degree of certainty that coming in second last
year was a bigger victory for him. Don't get me wrong, he's
happy to win, but I think during the long hours of training he
created a vision of a battle that would go down in the Ironman
annuls along with the Scott/Allen battles that are still fresh
in the memory of some of us old timers. It was just that kind
of visualization that drove Peter to train as hard as he did.
When I watched him blaze out of T2 like he was just starting a
5K road race I knew it would take an act of God to stop him
from winning. The act didn't come and Peter did win. Last
year Pete went into the race with the lingering smell of self
doubt drifting off him. He washed himself clean in the Kona
sun. When Thomas shook his hand on the stage and said
sincerely that he was glad to have him back where he belonged,
Pete rediscovered the joy of confidence.
This year has been a
tumultuous one for Peter but through it all he trained and
dreamed of winning again. Winning will afford him the luxury
of being able to put a few more years of racing in without
having to serve coffee or get a paper route in order to buy a
new patch kit for his bike. Although he's told me several
times that when he grows up he wants to work for UPS, I doubt
he'll ever deliver packages for the Brown. The thing is I
think he'd be happy doing it, but he likes his job now and
he's pretty good at it so I suppose we'll have to put up with
his ever serious mug on the screen for a few more years.
Now that he's won so
decisively the questions will not be if Peter can win again,
but how many times he'll win again. Ridiculous talk really.
As I said before, anything can happen out there and anything
can happen leading up to the day. Tim might finish next year
and he'll have something to say about someone else winning.
He now has the advantage of coming into next years race
without the pressure of being last years winner. Pete knows a
thing or two about that.
While I always thought Peter
would win, it doesn't really matter what I think. If you
really want to know – I think he'll win again. You can bet
whatever body part you want on it. But what I know for sure
is next year I'm going to Kona to watch the thing live.
Congratulations, my friend. |
