Lifestyle

Only a special brand of horse makes it to the top of the heap as a long distance triathlete. Mark Allen was a champion thoroughbred. Scott Tinley did it as the world's premier draft horse. He pushed and strained his way to two Hawaiian Ironman victories and a place in triathlon history and his response to losing, as he neared the end of a 25-year career, was simply to push more. To race the sunset.

Mileage and effort did not solve his problem, it made it worse. Next came batteries of tests performed by a phalanx of doctors over a span of years, all to fix what in the end turned out to be a simple case of grief.

Scott Tinley's new book, Racing the Sunset, is a remarkably frank look at the author's own struggle with existence after pro sports. The first-person account is interwoven with a scholarly look at how stars from other sports have dealt with the rapid and unexpected descent to earth following retirement from a storybook life.

It's a love story or, more precisely, a story of lost love. It's not his removal from center stage that sent Tinley on a journey to understand his own loss and grief. He missed the triathlete's version of the smell and the taste of the sideline with ninety-thousand people in the stands. He missed his ability to make the pivotal play in his game — a lifetime warrior forced with the prospect of forty more years of normal life as a civilian. Normal is the scariest word Scott Tinley knows.

The book is Tinley's story of the grind, and his attempt to gather up the grounds and become a whole bean again. Not far into it I realized I was reading something special, and decided that every prospective pro triathlete ought to read this book. Halfway through its 325 pages I'd expanded on that. Every budding pro in any sport ought to read it.

By the book's end I was, and am, certain that I was casting too small a net. My concept of the life of a pro athlete is now a lot more spacious than it was. I have room in my understanding for a more organic and complete view of the stars and idols I've invited into my life. They may be stars to us but they're more like the moon. We only see the reflective glory. Not the backside, the dark side. That's what Tinley's book shows, and his star shines more brightly now that he's written about it. It's not just a book for athletes, but for fans of athletes.

I'd like to read the second volume. I'm sure Tinley doesn't anticipate a sequel. The point of writing the book, it occurs to me, is that it's his therapy, and the point of therapy is to leave the pathology behind. But Tinley spends a lot of time quoting not only athletes whose skills diminish, but whose ability to play the game is cut abruptly short. He writes about David Bailey, Jim MacLaren and Greg Welch, who didn't have the luxury to choose when to retire. I wonder what former triathlete Jim MacLaren — now in a wheelchair — would give for just one day in the saddle? To climb Mount Palomar, turn right at the top, and lightly descend down the East Grade toward Lake Henshaw, the warm breath of God brushing his face? Each chapter in Racing the Sunset starts with a quote. One is from T.S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

The beauty of triathlon is, of course, played out in our abilities to run, swim and ride a bicycle and to ply our avocations irrespective of whether or not there's a race for us on the weekend. Or on any weekend. Now that he's gone clear of the first iteration of his life as a multisporter I'd like to read about his reentry — the day Tinley, our sport's poet laureate, our very own man of letters, comes full circle and writes of that descent down East Grade Road for the "first time."

Racing the Sunset is a charm to read, and few could've written it. The affable Tinley rubbed shoulders with legends from all sports during the run-up in his own notoriety, and leveraged those relationships in writing his book. Though fame was an element of his own pathology, it also gained him access to the legends of football, baseball, golf, cycling, hockey and such. Tinley opens their grief to us, in their own words.

How cured is Tinley of pushing and dragging that wagon faster and harder than anyone else, now that he's completed Racing the Sunset? Is he just back at it, just as an author instead of an athlete? So what if he is? Bring it on Tinman! I'll be your fan all over again.

Racing the Sunset: An Athlete’s Quest for Life After Sport, by Scott Tinley, 2003 (The Lyons Press), is available at Amazon.com.