Iron will

Last month, the longtime Bend resident completed the Ironman World Championship triathlon — a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike and a 26.2-mile run — in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

That is an accomplishment in itself, but by no means is it a rare one. A total of 1,772 other participants also finished the race that day. And Hollander himself had completed the race on 21 previous occasions.

But in this year's field, only Hollander was as old as 81 years.

In fact, no one else in the history of the Ironman World Championship has completed the race at Hollander's age, making him unique among the thousands of finishers who have crossed the finish line at the event, staged annually since the late 1970s.

“I reflect a lot on it, and it means a lot because it means I'm still alive,” Hollander said last week of his achievement. “And I've never been the fastest around, but now I say, ‘Well, I'm the oldest. That's a good thing.' ”

To boot, Hollander, a physicist, repeated as world champion in his division, for men age 80 and older. In 2010 he won the title by default, being the only competitor in his age group.

This year, however, three other men, all 80, joined him in what Hollander said was dubbed the “Iron Gents War.”

Recounting the race, Hollander said he took over the division lead from Bob Scott during the bike leg. But during the marathon run, France Cokan, a Slovak whom Hollander described as his nemesis, passed him.

“Everybody can run faster than me, but I'm pretty steady,” Hollander explained.

That steadiness paid off, as Hollander maintained contact with and then overtook Cokan in the final two miles of the run to win the division in 16 hours, 45 minutes, 55 seconds.

Hollander's time was 14:05 faster than the race's 17-hour cutoff time, but well slower than the 15:48:40 he turned in at the 2010 race.

“Last year I had the race of my life,” noted Hollander, who contested his first Ironman world championship race in 1985. “It's going to be a long time (before) some 80-year-old beats that one. I just had a good day. I got there and everything went right.”

This year, though, a lot went wrong.

A couple of months before this year's world championship, Hollander developed a hernia on the right side of his abdomen. Swimming and cycling did not aggravate the hernia, he said, but he ran the marathon portion of the race holding his hand to his side.

And that day — “out of the blue,” as Hollander put it — a kidney stone began to bother him. That resulted in back pain and abdominal cramps, the latter of which prevented him from ingesting almost anything but water during the race, not an ideal situation for an endurance athlete.

The kidney stone was taken care of shortly after Hollander's return to Bend, and he underwent an operation to repair his hernia this past Friday.

Hollander, a Long Island native, does not expect either of those health challenges to deter him for long. He still has plans for the future.

“Life is really good for me,” he explained. “I just feel full of life, and I'm not done yet either.”

He said he has not ruled out competing in another Ironman, though he may not make a 23rd trip to the world championship.

“I'm not going to say I'm not going to do another Ironman, but it would take a lot to get me back to Kona,” Hollander said.

He does, however, plan to take part in some races on the mainland in the months ahead, including an Ironman 70.3 race (half the distance of a full Ironman) in Galveston, Texas, in April.

Whatever he does decide in the end, Hollander will probably keep trailblazing for the octogenarian set.

“I guess I have actually done some good,” he admitted. “People will see you can be active and be old.”