From the Super Bowl to triathlon’s Super Bowl in Kona
Three NFL players have done an Ironman. Two of those also played in the Super Bowl. Do you know who they are?
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Ironman
This weekend’s Super Bowl will be one of the most-watched sporting events of the year. (Well, certainly the winter – 2024 is an Olympic year, of course!) Lots of triathletes will be glued to their televisions come Sunday night, which got us to thinking about athletes who have competed in football’s biggest game and have also competed in the event we all like to call the “Super Bowl of Triathlon” – the Ironman World Championship.
While there are three former NFL football players who have competed in Kona over the years, only two of them played in the Super Bowl.
Hines Ward
During his 14 seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers Ward caught 1,000 passes for 12,083 yards – when he retired those numbers made him the NFL’s. leading receiver. He was part of two Super Bowl championship teams (2006 and 2009), and was the MVP of the game in 2006.
After he retired in 2012, Ward took on a completely different challenge, winning Season 12 of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.” Then he turned his sights on triathlon, with eight-time Kona champ Paula Newby-Fraser (the two are pictured above) serving as his coach. In 2013 he prepped for the race in Kona with his first 70.3 race in Kansas, where he finished in 5:53:18. A few months later Ward finished the Ironman World Championship in 13:08:15.
Daryl Haley
During his six seasons in the NFL, the 6’6″ 300 lb offensive lineman played for New England Patriots, the Cleveland Browns and the Green Bay Packers. He played in the 1986 Super Bowl – his Patriots team lost to the Chicago Bears. Haley was nicknamed the “World’s Largest Triathlete” after he finished the Ironman World Championship in Kona in 1995. His time was 16:44:15.
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Don Davey
A defensive tackle with the Green Bay Packers and the Jacksonville Jaguars from 1991 to 1998, Davey has finished multiple Ironman races, including Kona, which he finished in 2014 in 13:54:57. Davey played for the University of Wisconsin and returned to Madison to compete at Ironman Wisconsin in 2005, and also raced at Ironman Florida in 2018 and 2021.
While the Green Bay Packers would play in a couple of Super Bowls during Davey’s career, he had been traded to the Jaguars and missed out on the big game.
