Blast From the past - Rockley Montgomery

Rockley Montgomery was a South African endurance sporting icon, winning the Leppin Ironman on five consecutive occasions and holding the title of World Quadrathlon Champion in 1992.

In the first of a series of snippets from the great man's career, Rockley describes his final Ironman victory in Sun City, circa 1993:

"I had already started to “wind-down” due to my winning world titles in other disciplines, such as the Coast to Coast multisport event in New Zealand. Iron Man training was starting to take a back seat in order to prepare for the defence of my World Quadrathlon title later that year. I needed to win the 1993 Ironman with as little effort as possible, although this was not to be.

The paddle leg went pretty much according to plan, with Henk Watermeyer finishing about a minute ahead of Darryl Van Smaalen, Oscar Stielau and myself. I then managed one of my best ever bike rides, averaging just over 42km/h and and feeling like I was at half pace. But as we know, the Ironman is always decided in the run, which turned out to be a humdinger.

By my own standards, my running form was nowhere near what it was a few years earlier. Unbeknownst to me, both Ben Jansen Van Vuuren and Brandon Collyer were competing in that year's edition of the race, both extremely strong runners. After running Henk down early on, I settled in to an easy but steady pace, waiting for any word of the others moving up. At about halfway, I heard that Collyer and Van Vuuren were coming up fast, although apparently some way back.

Making one of the few mistakes in my Ironnan career, I picked up the pace with the aim of opening up a cushion. In retrospect, I should have just kept going steady as I had done so many other times, and dealt with the challenge when it got real. By the time I started to settle down into a steady pace again, Ben was only 2min behind with 10km to go. Regardless of my plan to take it easy and save myself for international racing, I had to pick it up. As we got back onto the road to Sun City with 5km remaining, I went down to the “T” junction and then turned right. Ben, on the other hand, was running on the right hand side of the road. Hidden behind his seconding car, he took the slip road, which brought him within meters of me. My seconds, who had not managed to seem him until this point suddenly said to me: “Ben is behind you!” Rather off-handily, I scoffed that I knew this and then proceeded to ask by how many minutes. When I realized that he was right behind me, my pace instantly increased to sub-3min/km!

Deja vu: Montgomery out sprinting Ben Jansen Van Vuuren in Germiston prior to their 1993 Ironman showdown. 

Ben was now making his challenge with 5kms and we remained stuck together until the final climb into Sun City. As I hit the incline, my legs felt like they did at the end of a hard 800m race. If Ben kept up this pace he was going to beat me, so all I could do was “kick” as hard as I had ever done in any triathlon. Just as my legs were starting to “blow”, I glanced back and saw that Ben had “blown” first. My last Ironman victory had “down to the wire”. What a race!"