Digging deep with Siri Lindley

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In a pro triathlon career from 1996 through 2002, Siri Lindley won the 2001 ITU Olympic distance World Championship gold, 11 ITU World Cup victories and two ITU World Cup series titles.

As a triathlon coach beginning in 2003, Lindley surpassed her record as a competitor. In 2004 she guided Susan Williams to bronze and Loretta Harrop (in the final eight months before the race) to silver at the Athens Olympics. Lindley coached Mirinda Carfrae to the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in 2007 and wins at the Ironman World Championship in 2010, 2013 (a women’s course record) and 2014. She also coached Leanda Cave to a unique double - the Ironman 70.3 World Championship and Ironman World Championship titles in 2012. Lindley athletes – also including Yvonne Van Vlerken, Jodie Swallow, Mary Beth Ellis, Rebekah Keat, Amanda Stevens and Ellie Salthouse - won 43 other half-Iron distance races and 11 non-championship Ironman events.

But, as her autobiography Surfacing: From the Depths of Self-Doubt to Winning Big & Living Fearlessly makes clear, résumé highlights are not the story. It’s about how she arrived at these peaks and what drove her. This book chronicles her personal journey from an insecure and unhappy child who lashed out against the loneliness of her life after her parents’ divorce and the alienation she felt at mother’s subsequent marriage to mega-celebrity and NFL Hall of Famer Frank Gifford. And it chronicles her long struggle to follow her dreams in sport and to find and accept her true sexual identity.
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Lindley’s writes about her family’s turmoil and an escape into team sports in high school and college that led up to her post-college discovery of her bliss, triathlon, at age 25.

Lindley certainly had the motor. She had a strong family background in sports. Her uncle Royce was a 1964 U.S. Olympic gold medalist in eight man crew. Her father Peter Lindley was a star baseball, football and hockey player at Yale. Her mother Astrid was an energetic aerobics teacher with a hunger for skiing, swimming, cycling and running. And Siri was a sports-mad tomboy who played baseball, ice hockey and field hockey. And, at Brown University, Lindley was a star lacrosse player who just missed making the national team after graduation.

Stunned and depressed, she reignited her passion for sport a few years later when a friend invited Lindley to watch her do a local triathlon. Lindley was entranced. Thanks to a series of kindly mentors and the unwavering support of her mother Astrid, Lindley progressed from a comically inept beginner to a national contender. Getting serious about triathlon, Lindley worked with Boulder, Colorado local coach, Yoli Casas, and then moved to work with internationally recognized Jack Ralston of New Zealand. After rising to 3rd in the ITU World Cup series in 1999, Lindley became obsessed with making the 2000 U.S. women’s Olympic triathlon team but was shattered when her self-induced pressure and misbegotten notion to prepare for the Olympic trials in isolation led to failure.

While her physical potential was clear, her biggest foe was a debilitating lack of self-confidence and a fear of failure.
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