Since the early 2000’s the Santa Barbara Triathlon Club has been hosting a training day triathlon every summer, where anywhere from 15-30 triathletes show up to “race” Steve’s Tri. Today most people in the SBTC do not have firsthand knowledge of the “Steve” in Steve’s Tri. This is his story, in my words; let’s start with the obvious.

Twenty years ago, January 2003, on just another Sunday afternoon with a small swell off the shores of Devereux Beach in Isla Vista, the unincorporated town where most of the UC Santa Barbara students live, Steve Issaris, a long-time surfer and triathlete, was out enjoying himself on his longboard in the small surf. Steve had gone through a several year long journey (actually a decade long journey), just before this day on his quest to qualify and race in the Ironman Hawaii World Championship race in Kona, HI in October 2002, where he finished and did pretty well in his age group. Now was the time to relax with his wife and two very young daughters, all the long-distance training and hard work behind him for now. He was just out for an easy day on the water. No big swells like down in Todos Santos, BCS, Mexico where he had gone on many past surf excursions with his surfing buddies.

At some point another surfer noticed Steve floating in the water near his board, got Steve back onto his board and someone began performing CPR on him while he was being taken ashore by others joining in to help. They continued CPR on the beach while EMS was called, but it was all too late, Steve did not make it home to see his family that afternoon.

It then took hours to identify Steve while his wife had been calling his friends, asking if we knew where he was. Finally, a Sherriff’s department Deputy put together Steve’s SUV’s license plate in the parking lot and Steve, and his family was called and notified. I got the word from our close friend Dave, who was actually in Denmark on a work trip, to notify me of Steve’s passing, as well as from another close friend, Lee, who worked in the local DA’s office.

Word spread through the local triathlon, surfing, and friends and family community. By the time I got to work in the morning, the place where I first met Steve year’s ago, pre-triathlon career, as I entered the building, three of our co-workers met me. We stood in a group hug and cried, which would not be the last time this happened on this day.

Steve was 45 years old. He had finished arguably one of the toughest endurance events of his life about three months prior, at the top of his athletic career. He had no previous history of heart issues, and the feeling at the time was that anyone that could finish an Ironman distance triathlon had to be in the best shape of their lives. We were shocked, to our core. We grieved for his young family, for the small company he had moved to years before, one of their first employees. We grieved in the company where we met, for many a month, over his passing, with unresolved feelings and emotions.

In time, as I have recalled at many Steve’s Tris since (FYI, it used to be called the Tri for Fun, but after Steve passed, we all agreed to rename it after Steve), it wasn’t just Steve’s athletic prowess that we acknowledged on this day, it was Steve’s compassion for his fellow competitors and training partners that went along with his passion for the sport. After he passed, many people came forward to tell me stories of Steve and how he took time out from his long training days to ride along with them, talk to them about triathlon, and life. They commented on how nice it was for this obviously talented and driven athlete to take the time to talk to them, beginner or less passionate triathletes, to see how their training was going and what their goals were.

It was Steve’s passions and compassion that are ultimately what we remember. That even as he was putting the long miles on his journey to his Ironman Hawaii race, he was there for others. About that journey, beginning in 2001, it was a doozy.

Steve and I joined forces to form a triathlon relay team to do a short course triathlon, with another co-worker, Dick, back in 1989, which began my triathlon journey. The following year we stepped up to the Santa Barbara Triathlon Long Course race, as a relay again, with a different runner (Steve swam, I biked), and this was truly the start of Steve’s desire to continue on to longer distance triathlons, as well as rekindling his interest in running marathons.

Steve’s athletic background was as a runner in high school, who loved to surfed, while he also enjoyed riding bikes. He did a triathlon relay before I knew him and he was drawn back into the competition for some reason, while he brought a whole group of us along for the ride.

Fast forward to 2001, after many years of racing half Ironman distance tris, the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon (on his birthday no less), and several LA marathons, Steve signed up for Ironman California in Oceanside, CA. He raced, he did well, and he set his sights on trying to qualify for Ironman Hawaii in 2002. With a young family Steve saw 2002 as maybe his last chance, potentially for a while, to find the time outside his work and family life to train for such a race, with many hours spent swimming, biking, and running away from everything else.

The first race on his calendar was the new Ironman Utah, held in Provo, Utah, with the swim on Utah Lake. This lake was notable for being shallow and being downwind where windsurfers and the like would gather to ply their trade on the high winds and swells that would arise. The day before the Ironman race the forecast was for winds early the next day, while the race promoters held out hope that the winds wouldn’t be that great, and/or that they would come in after the swim was complete; that was not to be the case.

Steve recalled after the race, where it was started early due to a false start, with the winds kicking up high surf and lots of noise, with the RD unable to really put a stop to it, how he was having trouble navigating the course due to the winds and waves, he was just following the helicopter that was filming the pros at the lead of the race. He noted that they seemed to be changing course and that ultimately the race was halted as people were being swept towards the rocky shores, scrambling to get ashore, with help from fans and spectators alike; one man died of a heart attack during all this. Steve realized that the helicopter was changing course because the inflatable course buoys were being dragged off course by the winds.

Eventually the race was shortened to a duathlon, age group riders being sent off on three second intervals, while Ironman slots (for Hawaii and other North American sold out IM distance tris), and awards would be given out as usual. Steve qualified for another IM race but turned down the entry saying he felt like he hadn’t earned it by finishing an “Ironman distance” triathlon.

He decided to return to race the Buffalo Springs Triathlon, a half Ironman distance race that Steve, Vic Birtalan (who would go on to qualify 12 straight years for Ironman HI), and I had attempted in 1998. I cramped and DNF’d on the run while trying to finish my first half Ironman distance race on a day where it was over 100 degrees as I sat in T2 trying to recover from cramping on the bike due to lack of fluid and electrolytes. The race day drink mix did not sit well in my stomach and I wasn’t able to drink enough fluids to continue while dealing with the extreme heat and strong and hot winds. I was told racing in Lubbock Texas, in early June, was like riding your bike into a hair dryer. Imagine that, as it wasn’t that far off! Steve and Vic managed to finish the race in the heat, in the 15-20 MPH hot winds that blow across the plateau during the run, when I could not.

Steve flew to Lubbock, TX by himself, did the race and earned a slot to the sold-out Ironman Lake Placid race, not too many weeks away. He began another shortened Ironman training schedule, flew to Lake Placid, NY, again by himself, did the race and earned his much sought after Ironman Hawaii World Championship age group slot. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief for Steve, knowing all his hard work had finally paid off. Now we all just had step up and support Steve in yet another Ironman training cycle.

When October came around Steve was ready, as well as a few other Santa Barbara and Ventura triathletes, as well as their families and a host of their friends. It rained hard overnight in Kona, there was questions as to whether they should be swimming in the runoff that day, but the race went on, on schedule, under grey skies. In the end Steve conquered the 2.4-mile swim, the 112-mile bike, and the 26.2 mile run with the style and class that he always had, and ran across the finish line with his older daughter in tow. We all heard Mike Reilly call out that Steve Issaris, you are an Ironman. I get chocked up just thinking of that moment, 20 years gone.

So, as we set out to do another Steve’s Tri this month, what we will be talking about isn’t just the facts around Steve’s journey to race Ironman Hawaii on the Big Island, but the journey that Steve took all of us on, and how his passion for the sport taught all of us how to be more compassionate to our fellow athletes.

The second athlete in this story is Sandy Roberts, who has also sadly left us prematurely, but who we also remember for the journey that he took on us.

I was Santa Barbara Tri Club president, presiding over the first meeting of the year, when I noticed a new face in the crowd, an “older” guy, who after all the talking and presentations were done, came up to me and introduced himself. I learned that he was primarily a runner, albeit one that has been dealing with lots of niggling injuries and was having to cut back on his running. He knew some members of our club and they told them that it was a fun group, that with his running skills, and some training in the swim and the bike, that he could probably do well at the shorter distance races, so that he could keep competing; Sandy was all in and quickly joined our training group.

Sandy was a quick study, and with some early coaching advice he continued to improve at each race, eventually feeling strong enough to sign up for a half Ironman. Sandy was always very good at listening to his coaches, even when some of us wondered about the advice he was given, Sandy was all in. It turns out he was a very tough, but quiet, athlete.

He eventually qualified to race in the 70.3 World Championship race, after which he decided it was time to tackle an Ironman race. He chose IM Whistler, Canada, where he earned himself a slot to Ironman Hawaii, amazing all of us. Here was a man in his 70’s, not a long-time triathlete, who was humbler than the most, known almost more for deferring to others he trained with, instead of talking about himself.

As much as Sandy enjoyed the time training with everyone, he might have enjoyed just hanging out before and afterwards with those he was going racing with. To me that was always his strong suit, his compassion for others, trying to help them in any way he could, even though he himself was at times the one that needed help in his training and racing. It’s not that he wasn’t competitive, or as passionate about racing as Steve Issaris, he just presented in a different way.

After Sandy finished Ironman Hawaii, having previously DNF’d at the 70.3 Honu Tri the first time he attempted racing on the Big Island, due to the heat and humidity that day, not being as well prepared as he would have liked to be, he was happy to continue training while starting to dial back the racing. It was out on a training run along the Santa Barbara beach front, a place that we have all run back and forth through hundreds of times, that Sandy succumbed to a heart attack and never recovered, even as passersby jumped to his aid.

 As what happened before with Steve, we all were in shock, that this Ironman distance athlete should be struck down out doing one of the things they loved to do, out for a leisurely run along the beachfront.

I’ve mentioned the words passion and compassion when talking about these two men, a lot. In Latin the word passion means “to suffer”, while compassion means “to suffer with”; I think this describes these men to a T.

Their passion drove them to push themselves to a higher goal, while their compassion drove them to include us with them on their journey. That is the reason we do Steve’s Tri now, to come out, as a group, to share our love for the sport of triathlon, but to do it not only for ourselves, to our own benefit, but to help others achieve their goals as well, however small or humble they may appear.

I know that after Steve passed, that I raced with him in my heart for a long time, trying to honor his memory, and in turn doing what he and Sandy would do, to include others on the journey.  To never forget and to remind everyone on how lucky we are to be able to do the things that we do. To never take it for granted, and to enjoy every minute of it, even while we are pushing ourselves to our athletic boundaries.

In memory of my friends, Steve and Sandy; we miss you guys, and we will never forget.

Fred Maggiore

June 2023