GEELONG, AUSTRALIA - FEBRUARY 08: Craig Alexander of Australia is greeted by his daughter Lucy as he crosses the line to win the Men's Geelong Half Ironman Triathlon at Eastern Beach on February 8, 2009 in Geelong, Australia. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

 (Kevin Mackinnon catches up with the defending Ironman World Champion Craig Alexander)

Make no mistake, Craig Alexander is one of the most competitive guys you will ever meet. He loves to win races, and he does that more often than he doesn’t. 

What makes Alexander such a great champion, though, is that he realizes what he did last year – win the Ironman World Championship – was a feat that came with a lot of responsibility, and he’s happy to bear the responsibility in order to try and make our sport even better.

Like Chrissie Wellington, I’m quite happy to call Craig Alexander one of the best ambassadors our sport has ever seen. I’ve yet to find someone who doesn’t think Crowie (his nickname) is a class act and great guy. 

Heck, even Chris McCormack doesn’t try and trash talk with the guy before a race. (“Crowie just laughs and tells me to shut up,” Macca says.) 

Which is why, when I asked him if he’d rather be remembered as an Ironman world champion or as one of the greatest ambassadors our sport has ever seen, Alexander jumped on the latter.

“That’s more important,” he says. “In hindsight, I’ve looked back at so many of the greatest athletes our sport has ever seen and once they retire, especially in Australia, they’re not utilized to promote the sport and they disappear. I’d like to be remembered as a good athlete and as a good guy. It’s important to promote yourself and your family well and represent yourself well and to be remembered for that.”

That doesn’t mean the guy isn’t burning to win another world championship in Kona. Alexander says he never tires of hearing the words “defending Ford Ironman World Champion.” 

He shouldn’t – his was a long, well-deserved journey.

It’s easy to think that since the guy has been so successful over the last few years that it’s always been easy, but in reality it hasn’t. Alexander watched as his training partner McCormack won world titles and dominated triathlon racing before he started to win races. 

One of the things that makes him such a great athlete is the fact that he didn’t sit around complaining because other people were winning and he wasn’t. He did something about it.

Even two days before he won the Ironman 70.3 World title in Clearwater in 2006 he was still a relative unknown in many Ironman circles. (OK, I plead guilty – I was winging that interview at the press conference!) 

Crowie was all-too-aware that most of the triathlon world didn’t know much about him, but he had already figured out how he could change that.

“Coming into Clearwater, I’d never raced Kona,” he says. “My mission was to try and make a name for myself. As I’ve got older I’ve figured out that you can waste energy winging about it, or you can turn it around and use it to your advantage. At the end of the day we’re in sport – everyone loves a winner. You can finish third and complain that everyone is interviewing the winner, or you can figure out how you can be the winner.”

All those years of watching Macca do those post-race interviews? They just served as fuel for Alexander as he trained harder and harder to become arguably the world’s best distance triathlete. Now that he’s got that Kona title and all the fame that goes along with it, he’s pretty determined to do it again, but doesn’t seem to be putting a huge amount of pressure on himself.

“It’s not important for me to go there and win,” he says, “But it’s very important that I put out a performance that I can be proud of. If you look at the great athletes in our sport over any distance, they’ve been consistent. The best athletes, when they’ve gone there, they’ve put out a good effort every time. They might not have won, but they’ve been in the mix.”

Part of Alexander’s impressive outlook and perspective comes from the incredible family support he has. He’s been married to Neri for a decade, there are two children – 4-year-old Lucy and 5-month-old Austin – who will smile and laugh with him whether he wins or not. (OK, Lucy, pretty much has only ever seen him win, so she probably thinks that’s just the norm.) The bottom line is this guy doesn’t need to win races to feel good about himself.

“I think having a family adds a lot of perspective to your life,” Alexander says. “Triathlon has been my life for a long time. It’s been my job but also my passion. I guess it can consume you … it’s all me, me, me. As you move on in life you see that you can have other things and still race well. As you get older and more mature it’s easy to focus on the race when it’s time to focus on the race. My life will be complete with or without triathlon. The fact that I get to do something I love for a living is the cream.

“Getting a family, it intensifies your focus even more,” he continues. “I draw a lot of inspiration from the fact that the family has sacrificed a lot and that they’re there watching. At the end of the day we go home as a family and life goes on.”

So, does that mean Alexander won’t arrive at the start line fiercely determined to win? Ha! Ask Richie Cunningham what it was like to run 3:20/ km at the Muskoka 70.3 race … and not keep up with Crowie.

“I think I’m fit,” Alexander said on the finish line in Muskoka to Cunningham and myself. That was, without a doubt, the biggest understatement of 2009.

Which is what makes Alexander such a great champion. He wants to win, but he’s also very attuned to the fact that there’s much more to being great than simply winning races.

“We all need each other – the sport’s healthy with the amateur ranks are healthy, when the pro ranks are healthy, when the races are filling up, when there’s lots of participation and corporation and community support of the races. If you can help in some way being the world champion, it’s important to do it. It’s more important to do that than just win races. A lot of people have won races.”

For all the wins, what I’ll always remember Alexander for is the fact the he’s such a great guy – who happens to be very fast, too.

(You can reach Kevin Mackinnon at kevin@ironman.com)