Cherie Gruenfeld Inducted into IRONMAN Hall of Fame

Cherie Gruenfeld wins her age group at The IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship Taupo. Photo: FinisherPix.

Well, it’s hard to imagine a more fitting inductee. Cherie Gruenfeld, the 14-time IRONMAN World Champion and the oldest woman to ever finish the world championship in Kona, will join some of the sport’s most famous names as this year’s inductee to the IRONMAN Hall of Fame. Hers has been an amazing career that spans over 30 years and includes, along with all those Kona titles, four 70.3 world titles. Added to her competitive exploits, Gruenfeld also authored “Become an IRONMAN,” and also founded and continues to run a program called “Exceeding Expectations” in 2001 “that helps at-risk kids in San Bernardino, California achieve excellence in education through the foundations of triathlon and sport.”

“My 33-year IRONMAN journey has been a gift, and I’m deeply honored to be recognized among so many accomplished athletes and contributors,” Gruenfeld said when she learned that she would be this year’s inductee.

(Full disclosure: Gruenfeld is a friend, and I credit her with ordering her husband, best-selling author Lee Gruenfeld, to write a column for me during my time as the editor in chief at IRONMAN – we could never afford his talent, but he wasn’t in a position to refuse his wife’s demand. Those columns were collected in a book that I edited: “Stumbling Towards the Finish Line.”)

OK – now that we’ve got that bit of housework out of the way, let’s get back to just how appropriate it is that Gruenfeld will be added to the IRONMAN Hall of Fame in the last year of the women’s-only race in Kona. First off, here’s the list of the Hall of Fame members:

Kona History

As Lee Gruenfeld wrote in a story I commissioned for Triathlon Magazine Canada in Nov., 2022, Cherie Gruenfeld wasn’t supposed to have a long history in the sport. In 1992 she took a year’s sabbatical from her work as an executive in artificial intelligence to do an IRONMAN race.

“But when she came across the finish line in Kona in 1992, I took one look at her face, turned to her brother and said (this is verbatim), ‘That broad ain’t never going back to work,'” Lee Gruenfeld wrote.

She took her first IRONMAN world title in 1994. She would go on to become the first woman over 55 to finish the race in under 12 hours. When she “retired” from Kona in 2015, she’d competed on the Big Island 22 times, winning her age group at 13 of those appearances.

In 2019, though, Gruenfeld decided she wanted to head back to Kona to try and set a new age group record in the 75 to 79 category. Unfortunately two different cancer diagnoses sidelined that goal, then COVID kiboshed the next few years of racing on the Big Island. She would finally return in 2022, then 78, to go after the record.

Gruenfeld was on track to break Sister Madonna Buder’s existing course record (15:54) until back spasms literally stopped her in her tracks. She somehow managed to get across the line in 16:20, taking her 14th IRONMAN World Championship title.

Gruenfeld is greeted at the finish line in Kona in 2022 by Mark Allen. Photo: Tony Svensson/ Trimarket/ IRONMAN

Exceeding Expectations

The athletic accomplishments are one thing, but the difference Gruenfeld has made to a group of high-risk kids in San Bernardino might be even more amazing. Here’s how I described the program a few years ago in a feature I wrote on Gruenfeld and the program, once again for Triathlon Magazine Canada:

That program got started in 2001 after Gruenfeld had done a talk at a local school about setting goals and achieving them. She showed the kids a video of her setting a record in Kona. After the talk she mentioned to the teacher that there was a small triathlon coming up in a few months and wondered if any of the kids might be interested in taking part.

She had no idea what she was getting into. When she learned that none of the kids she’d been speaking to had bikes, she organized to get bikes, found people to do the swim and the run, and brought 12 of the kids to the race to participate as part of a relay.

Shortly after that the group was coming back from another event and Gruenfeld got talking to the kids about what they would do after they graduated from high school.

“Why are you talking to us about stuff like that,” one of the kids said to her. “That’s for other kids, not us.”

Gruenfeld was shocked to find out that none of the kids she was working with had any family members who had ever graduated from high school, let alone gone to university. She realized that the goal of the program had to change – getting kids to participate in a triathlon shouldn’t be the goal. Convincing them that they could get an education needed to be the real objective.

Now, almost 25 years after she started the program, numerous Exceeding Expectations athletes have gone on to college and/ or have become distinguished military members, and some of those former members are back with the program as coaches and mentors. You can find out more about Exceeding Expectations here.

“We are honored to induct Cherie to our IRONMAN Hall of Fame,” said Scott DeRue, Chief Executive Officer for The IRONMAN Group. “Cherie is an exemplary ambassador for the sport, has dedicated a lifetime to triathlon and the IRONMAN brand, and has championed what it means to be an age-group IRONMAN World Champion numerous times over. Her achievements have furthered the sport and inspired many to embrace the IRONMAN mantra, ‘Anything is Possible.’ We are proud to recognize Cherie as the newest deserving member of the IRONMAN Hall of Fame, and thank her for her lasting impact on our sport.”

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