ESCONDIDO, Calif. (BRAIN) — Two-time Ironman world champion Scott Tinley and former triathlon journalist Mike Plant have announced the launch of trihistory.com. With a goal of creating a collaborative and ongoing narration of the history of triathlon, the website will contain articles, photographs and personal narratives, drawn initially from the large bank of the founders' own archives.
"Scott and I personally own volumes of historically significant information – and have access to a lot more," Plant said. "Most of it was seen originally by a relatively small audience; some of it was never published at all. I see this site as kind of a big scrapbook, personally narrated by the people who were there at the time."
Plant and Tinley plan to expand the website to include a diverse group of journalists, photographers, athletes, race promoters and others to share stories about the evolution of the sport, as it was told at the time and as it is viewed from a contemporary perspective.
"Mike and I feel the same about our disparate but connected pasts in the sport," Tinley said. "We could not have been more fortunate to be cast into those early cauldrons, to be standing on the swampy sands of Fiesta Island looking at each other and just laughing at how much damn fun this really hard new sport could be. There was something about triathlon and perhaps it's only now that we can all step back and ask WTF was that all about?"
Along with Dave Scott, Mark Allen and Scott Molina, Tinley was a member of the "Big Four," a group that dominated the sport through most of its first decade and beyond. He is considered to be one of the most versatile triathletes of all time. Tinley's essays have been published in Triathlete magazine, Outside, Men's Journal and at CBS News/Sports. He has also published six books. Tinley, who earned his Ph.D. in cultural studies in 2012, currently conducts research and teaches sport humanities courses at San Diego State University and Cal State San Marcos.
Plant is the author of Iron Will, a history of the Hawaii Ironman. He was the founding publisher of the San Diego Running News (later Running & Triathlon News), one of the first publications in the U.S. to cover triathlon in the early days of the sport. He was a contributing editor for Triathlon and others. Plant's photography and feature articles appeared in a variety of national publications throughout the 1980s and '90s. His "Plant Report" was a pre-electronic blog-type publication that covered the business side of multi-sport, with subscribers in 20 countries. He is currently the founder and president of MPA Event Graphics.
