a legendary dealmaker.
In 2005, a friend of his in the investment business, Fernando Vigil of Bain Capital Ventures, introduced Du Bey to an entrepreneur named Chris Hessler, who was already an accomplished triathlete. Hessler convinced the two investors to enter a triathlon. They rented mountain bikes and, Du Bey says, “swam for the first time since I was 8.” Even after finishing close to last, he found it “amazingly fun.”
He was hooked. Du Bey signed up for several more local triathlons. Something inside him changed. “I’d been a working drone on Wall Street for seven years, solely focused on work,” he says. “I think a lot of people throw themselves into careers and get numb, a kind of lack of inspiration and passion for life. Triathlon helped me find that; I think maybe it really changed my life.”
He identified the Ironman as the ultimate triathlon test and signed up for the Lake Placid version. He joined a team called Full Throttle Endurance at Chelsea Piers and discovered an entire subset of the population he wasn’t aware of. “It’s a whole world, all these Type A people who like to solve problems,” he says.
The Ironman stands as an extraordinary physical test, and essentially began as a Hawaiian daydream, part of an ongoing friendly debate about which of three local events – the Honolulu Marathon, the Waikiki Rough Water Swim, or the Around Oahu Bike Ride – was the most difficult, and thereby produced the best athlete. A U.S. Navy officer named John Collins and his wife Judy decided to combine the three as the ultimate endurance test. In 1978, 15 participants took on a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bike ride, capped with a marathon (26.2 miles).
The winner was to be called Ironman; Navy officer Gordon Haller was the first, crossing the finish line in 11 hours, 46 minutes, and 58 seconds. Eleven others completed the race, and Ironman entered the lexicon. Word spread, fueled in part by a Sports Illustrated writer who happened upon the race while in town to cover a golf tournament in 1979. His 10-page story drew interest, and more competitors. In 1980, ABC’s own icon —Wide World of Sports– televised parts of the race. Long before viral videos, most Americans had only a handful of channels to watch. The Ironman became must-see TV, especially when what became the championship moved from Collins’ original course to Kona, where the stark lava fields cyclists pedaled through added an element of visual drama.
The drama that helped cement the event’s reputation came in 1982, when 23-year-old Julie Moss, a graduate student competing to complete a thesis, led for much of the race and then collapsed yards from the finish line. Her minutes-long lead evaporated and she was passed by the eventual winner, Kathleen McCartney, also competing for the first time at the Ironman distance. Moss’ determination to finish – she literally crawled to the finish line – was broadcast on national television.
The world record, set in 2011, is 8 hours, 3 minutes, and 56 seconds. That’s more than three-and-a-half hours faster than Haller’s inaugural time. (Haller himself posted a 10:58 during the second Ironman, knocking 47 minutes off his first attempt.3)
His first time in the race, Du Bey posted a more-than-respectable 10 hours, 15 minutes. “As soon as I finished, I thought, ‘I’ve got to get faster,’” he says. “You’re in it like an addiction.”
Meanwhile, he’d gone to work for Providence Equity Partners, a Rhode Island–based private equity firm specializing in media and telecommunications deals. Its New York office sits in the iconic 9 West 57th building, also home to the buyout firms KKR and Apollo. Providence’s investments include Univision and Warner Music; the firm has assets under management in excess of $40 billion.
As Du Bey got deeper into the world of Ironman, he set different aspects of his daily life on a happy collision course. Du Bey rightly identified Ironman as an iconic brand, a modern marvel of branding, and, it turns out, intellectual property management. What other company inspires customers to tattoo themselves with its logo?
That logo is known as the M-Dot because it resembles an M (meant to resemble a body) and a circle representing the head. World Triathlon Corp., the parent company, trademarked the logo, the word Ironman, and even the combined mileage in an Ironman (140.6) and a half-Ironman (70.3). Both Ironman finishers, tattooed and otherwise, fiercely protect the brand. And so do WTC’s lawyers. That was part of the appeal for Jesse Du Bey, investor.
Du Bey was able to complement his investment pedigree with a stellar Ironman resume. He first qualified for the Ironman World Championships, held annually in Hawaii, in 2007. That race was, he says, “so difficult I was literally hallucinating, which is not uncommon.” He vowed to return to the island of Kona, which is a one-word Holy Grail, like “Boston” for marathon runners. He made it back in both 2008 and 2009, after training “like a professional,” dropping weight, and reducing his time. In 2009, he posted a 9:28, making him the seventh-fastest American Ironman and placing him in the top 100 overall, including professionals.
His initial approach toward buying Ironman was subtle; he knew it would be a long game. He flew to its headquarters in Tampa armed only with five PowerPoint slides laying out what he proposed to do, returning half a dozen times to bolster his internal pitch. His bosses at Providence “got it fast,” he says. “They all ride bikes and do competitive stuff.” Like Du Bey, the broader push toward competitive endurance sports wasn’t a theoretical trend to the other investors. They were living it themselves.
In 2008, Ironman was in an era of rapid growth, along with triathlons in general. From 1998 to 2014, membership in USA Triathlon, a requirement to participate in any sanctioned triathlon, grew more than fivefold, to 550,000 from 100,000.4 Du Bey discovered the popularity didn’t wane in the economic crisis, supporting the theory that tough financial times may actually bolster participation as we look beyond the stress of the office for satisfaction.
Triathlons also were reaping the rewards of a populace that had grown up running and trudging to the gym and was bored and dissatisfied. Cyclists, too, were hemmed in to some extent by the constant one-upsmanship of the latest and greatest bike. Cycling clubs can be cliquey.
By grabbing the public imagination, Ironman made the concept of swimming, biking, and running together appealing. As shorter distances became more popular and prevalent, people who might not otherwise have tried it took the chance, goaded by friends and family. Some raised money for charity, others just wanted to challenge themselves. There’s also a return-to-childhood element for many of us who grew up riding bikes around the neighborhood and spending summers at pools, lakes, or the beach. Add in running – among the most basic human pursuits – and it has a strong appeal.
Du Bey contends the triathlon’s appeal rests largely on a simple but not necessarily obvious element: No one is good at all three sports, certainly in the beginning, and even after a number of races. The need to ask for, and give, help lends an air of collegiality to the triathlon that doesn’t exist in large measure in the sports individually. The sum of the parts makes the triathlon an endeavor you simply can’t do alone, at least happily.
“Everyone needs to learn something because no one comes from a complete running, swimming, and biking background,” Du Bey says. “Even if they did, they need to learn training, nutrition, and transitions. This creates a culture of learning and sharing. The nicest vibe you’ll ever get in competitive sports is in the start corral at a triathlon. And the difficulty of the event and the primal thing about the suffering – it creates a tribal community. Respect is earned through the effort, the personal breakthroughs, the pain, the positivity. That’s what you need for a viral trend: real humanity.”
Providence aggressively expanded Ironman, from a handful of races to 200 annually, and growing its staff more than tenfold, to 250 from 21. Part of the expansion was in variety, specifically in the so-called 70.3 distance, half of the traditional Ironman across the swim, bike, and run.
Blake Whitney, “Ironman’s First Champ, Gordon Haller, Looks Back 25 Years,”
Kate Lewis, “Is Rapid Growth Endangering the Ironman and Endurance Sports?” Glideslope Runway Blog, October 14, 2014, www.theglideslope.com/runway/is-rapid-growth-endangering-the-ironman-and-endurance-sports/.
