McDermott described Dunbar as “a blond, open-faced fellow who is very good-natured and shy around strangers. He ran in a women’s race last year wearing a T-shirt that read TOKEN. But there is a serious side to Dunbar, and he had seethed ever since his 1978 defeat. When people mime his hardened competitive spirit, they clench their fists and make chomping, biting gestures, evidently comparing him with an implacable snapping turtle.”

The story was Ironman’s spark. “ABC’s Wide World of Sports” signed up for the third event, along with 108 competitors, in January 1980.

By then, though, John and Judy Collins were gone to the mainland. They were relieved to know that the event, now in the hands of a couple who ran a couple of Nautilus fitness centers, would survive, at least for one more year.

Dunbar is among those who still contend that it was not the Collinses’ race to give away — that it belonged to the collective group of original competitors, only one of whom was John Collins.

“I have respect for John and his wife,” Dunbar said. “But it hits me here” — he tapped his chest — “as a fellow Navy man, that he didn’t consider the team.”

A former Navy SEAL takes action

Valerie Silk was 29 at the time. She was not an athlete and had no interest in endurance sports.

“After the first event, I could see that it needed a race director, and it was something I wanted to try my hand at,” Silk, now 68, said in a recent interview from her home in St. Petersburg, Fla. “So I stepped away from the clubs, turned those over to my husband, and I took on the race. And he was happy for me to do it.”

The couple divorced in 1981, but not before signing an article of incorporation with the state, creating a business called Hawaiian Triathlon Corporation.