I want to grow up and be this cool some day

In a race that lasted more than 14 hours, eight minutes made a big difference for Mt. Lebanon's Roger Brockenbrough.

The 75-year-old triathlete reached the halfway point of the 2.4-mile ocean swim at the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii last weekend and officials told him he had only an hour until the cutoff time.

He'd need to shave more than 20 minutes off his first-half time in order to come in under the wire and complete the rest of the race, consisting of a 112-mile bike leg and 26.2-mile run.

Brockenbrough turned it on. He finished with eight minutes to spare en route to winning the 75-79 age group at arguably the world's most difficult race, and in so doing completed the World Triple Crown of multi-sport competition.

In September, Brockenbrough won gold at the International Triathlon Union World Triathlon Championship Grand Final in Australia in an Olympic distance race (1.5K swim, 40K bike, 10K run), then was victorious again in the ITU World Duathlon Championship (10K run, 40K bike, 5K run) in North Carolina just two weeks before Ironman.

"I never thought I could pull off all three, but it was fun trying and it was great to do it," said Brockenbrough, whose son, John, also competed in Hawaii and finished 53rd in the 50-54 age group while battling illness.

According to Tim Yount, spokesman for USA Triathlon, Brockenbrough becomes just the second athlete ever to win all three world championship events in one year. The other was Madonna Buder i*****

Yount also said that Brockenbrough will be a frontrunner for the 2009 Grandmasters Male Triathlete of the Year Award, to be selected in December.

"It's an unbelievable feat," Yount said. "The fact that he finished Ironman at 75-79 is a great feat, and to add on top of that the duathlon world championship and the triathlon world championship shows that he has speed as well as endurance."

Brockenbrough was pleased with his winning time at the World Triathlon Championship but wasn't sure how the long flight back would affect his performance in North Carolina.

"It wasn't easy. I had a Scottsman right behind me the whole way," he said. "I won by only 27 seconds so it was a lot of pressure, and it rained the whole race. Then there were two more weeks before Hawaii and I thought it would be really neat to win all three, and by golly it happened."

There were 10 men in Brockenbrough's age group at Ironman last weekend. Six missed cutoffs, and he passed one on the bike and two on the run for the win. This was Brockenbrough's sixth Ironman and his fourth first-place finish.

For now, Brockenbrough is resting and recovering from a brutal month of competition. He is still working on his race schedule for 2010.

"I like the training, I guess that's where it starts," Brockenbrough said of what drives him to keep competing. "Then I try to do a little better each year. I don't always do it because I'm a little older each year. But I look at my previous times and try to train different, be more efficient. That's a big part of it."