The Iron War and Paula Newby-Fraser's Comeback: Retelling Two of Kona's Greatest Races

A little past mile 23 of the marathon, the Queen K climbs one last long hill before the course turns down Palani Road into town. On October 14, 1989, Mark Allen and Dave Scott reached the aid station at the foot of that climb side by side, as they had been for most of the previous eight hours.

Scott reached for a drink. Allen started to do the same. In his own account of the race, "something yelled out at me, 'GO!' I jerked my hand back and started sprinting."

That moment decided the Iron War, the most famous head-to-head race in the sport's history. Less often told is what else happened that day: Paula Newby-Fraser won the women's race by almost 21 minutes. Six years later, she was sitting on a curb a few hundred yards from the same finish line, and the year after that she came back to win again. This is the last of my three pieces on Kona this week, after the culture of race week and the course and the climate. These are two of my favorite Kona stories, and on Saturday the race will be run over most of the same roads.

Before the Iron War: Five Meetings, Five Losses

By 1989, Mark Allen had raced Kona six times without winning. He didn't finish in 1982. He was third in 1983 and fifth in 1984, a year he started the marathon with a 12-minute lead. He was second in 1986, and second again in 1987, after leading by about five minutes with fewer than 10 miles to run. In 1988, the one year Dave Scott withdrew the night before the race with a knee injury, Allen was fifth.

Scott had won the race six times. In the five years both men raced Kona, Scott won every time. Allen described it this way: "We had met five times before on the hallowed grounds in Hawaii. Dave was the clear and undisputed king."

Allen came into the 1989 race having won the first ITU World Championship in Avignon earlier that year. He also brought an image he hadn't gone looking for. Two days before the race, he saw a magazine photo of Don José Matsuwa, a Huichol shaman Allen describes as 110 years old. "Don José had a look that was both peaceful and powerful," Allen wrote later. The picture stuck with him.

The Iron War: Eight Hours Side by Side

The two of them came out of the water together, Scott in 51:16 and Allen in 51:17, with only Wolfgang Dittrich and Rob Mackle ahead of them. On the bike, Scott set the pace and Allen stayed with him. "I shadowed Dave the entire ride staying just behind him," Allen wrote. Scott tried to break the pattern twice on the Queen K. "At mile 83 on the Queen K Highway, I tried my first acceleration," he wrote, and then "one more acceleration around mile 91." Allen stayed on both times. Their bike splits were 4:37:53 for Scott and 4:37:52 for Allen. Add their swim and bike times together and the totals match to the second.

Then they ran most of a marathon together, shoulder to shoulder. Allen has said that halfway through it, he was "literally steps away from giving up." What happened next is the part of the story that sounds most unlikely, so I'll let him tell it. "Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something. It was a revered 110-year-old Huichol shaman," he wrote. "I felt energy, life force, coming from Don José that filled me back up." He kept running with Scott.

They were still together at the mile 23 aid station. Scott grabbed a drink, Allen pulled his hand back, and the gap opened on the long climb that followed. Scott, by his own account, had been planning a move of his own: "Looking up at the top of Palani Hill, I knew this was the moment I was going to break Mark," he wrote, and his plan was to sprint the descent into town. He never got the chance. Allen reached the top of the hill first. Scott saw it happen from behind: "For each stride, I could see a slight lengthening of the gap between us." At the bottom of the descent into town, Allen looked back. "I couldn't see Dave, and in that instant, I knew I had done it."

Allen won in 8:09:15. Scott finished 58 seconds later in 8:10:13. Both broke the course record of 8:28:37, Scott's own mark from 1986, by more than 18 minutes. Allen ran 2:40:04 for the marathon, and that stood as the Kona run record for 27 years. Scott, who had predicted almost all of it, summed it up afterward: "The race went exactly how I predicted it would go. Except the finish was wrong."

Allen won the next four as well, sat out 1994, and won a sixth title in 1995 at age 37. Scott came back in 1994 at age 40 and finished second. In 2025, Allen wrote an open letter to his old rival that explains the whole rivalry in three sentences: "You were the fire I needed. Losing to you over and over could've broken me. Instead, it made me better."

Paula Newby-Fraser: 1989 to 1996

Paula Newby-Fraser's race that day was never close. She won in 9:00:56, almost 21 minutes ahead of Sylviane Puntous, and broke the course record she had set the year before by five seconds. The man waiting for her at the finish was her future husband, Paul Huddle.

Over the next few years she kept winning. In 1992 she ran 8:55:28, the first time a woman broke nine hours in Kona, and that record stood for 17 years. By the fall of 1995 she had seven titles, and she was expected to win an eighth. She expected it too. "Anything other than a win, was a failure," she said later.

1995: A few hundred yards short

For most of the day, the race went to plan. Her bike split of 5:06:04 was almost 12 minutes faster than Karen Smyers', and Matt Fitzgerald's account puts her lead at 11:45 starting the marathon. Smyers ran that lead down. By the time they reached town, Newby-Fraser's lead was down to a little more than a minute. A few hundred yards from the finish, she stopped. "I could not go another 300 yards. I just could not," she said.

She sat on a curb along Aliʻi Drive for about 20 minutes. Smyers won in 9:16:46. Newby-Fraser eventually got up and walked to the finish in fourth place, in 9:37:54. Fernanda Keller passed her for third in the final stretch and finished six seconds ahead.

Her own explanation is one of the most honest things an athlete at that level has said about a race. "All was fantastic through the bike and onto the run. I was so vested in my confidence of winning that I somehow forgot the basics. I completely neglected my nutrition and hydration." And: "I was too busy worrying about winning and the gap closing from behind. If I'd even have taken a one-minute pause at an aid station somewhere to refuel and rehydrate, the job would have been done."

1996: The eighth title

A year later, Newby-Fraser came back and won in 9:06:49, four and a half minutes ahead of Natascha Badmann, with Smyers third. She pulled away from Badmann on the run back to town from the Energy Lab. Afterward she described a completely different frame of mind: "I didn't bring anything from last year with me. I wasn't thinking about it. My motto for today was 'This is the moment. Don't worry about what did happen or what should happen or what might happen. Just be in the moment.'"

It was her eighth Kona title. Nobody has won more.

What I Take From Both

Allen's story is about what repeated losses can build. He lost to the same man five times on the same course before beating him, and 36 years later he still credits those losses for the win. Almost every athlete has a race go sideways at some point, and how you read that race shapes the next one. If you've had one this season, our piece on handling a DNS, DNF or a last-minute goal change is a good place to start.

Paula's story is the one I'd want every long-course athlete to read before race day. The most decorated athlete in Kona history said the difference between a win and fourth place came down to one minute at an aid station. Fueling and fluids are a plan you carry out every hour, and they matter most when the race feels like it's going well, which is exactly when they're easiest to skip. Paula, by her own account, had let the basics slide somewhere on the run.

Her 1996 motto works at any distance, too. In a long race, the mile you're running is the one you can do something about. Pace it, fuel it, and let the finish line come to you. For the full day's run plan, see our guide to IRONMAN marathon pacing, and for the history of how Kona got here, our Kona history and viewing guide.

Enjoy Saturday. When the leaders hit the last climb on the Queen K, think of 1989.

If you have a big race ahead and want a plan built around you, set up a call with us now, and we will help you be ready for your best race day!