Legends of Triathlon: Erin Baker – Pioneering Sportswomen – 9 x World Champion
Erin Baker is a New Zealand and World Triathlon legend. A pioneering sportswoman and 9 x World Champion who paved the way for women in triathlon, a paving that was full of grit, determination and justice coupled with a rejection of sport being a man’s world.
To the Kiwi a triathlon is a triathlon and in terms of technique, skills and distance, both women’s and men’s races are the same. For Baker, if women were to put in the same number of hours and effort and make the same sacrifices as men then the rewards should be equal. More on this as we chronicle her career.
The Erin Baker Award was recently bestowed upon Taylor Knibb (USA) for the ‘Most Valuable Player’ (MVP) in the Collins Cup.
To have an award named after you means the individual must have achieved a high level of visibility and distinction,
Many, particularly the younger generation, are now asking who is Erin Baker?
The answer is simply a ‘Legend of Triathlon’.
Her record as a 9 x World Champion stands by itself
Athletic Performance: ITU Career: 1989 – 1994
First ITU World Champion (1989)
3 x ITU World Cup wins
Auckland 1990 Commonwealth Games Champion (Demonstration Sport)
Unofficial World Champion (1987 – short-distance, 1988 – standard-distance)
1991 World Duathlon Champion
From triathlons humble beginnings and prior to the creation of ITU Erin Baker was winning World Championships
1985 world middle-distance
1986 world middle-distance
1988 world middle-distance
In addition
2 x Ironman World Champion (1987 & 1990)
Other:
New Zealand Athlete of the Year (1989),
Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), for services as a triathlete. (1993)
Inductee New Zealand Sport Hall of Fame (1995)
Inductee World Triathlon (ITU) Hall of Fame (2014)
The New Zealander, Erin Baker can be considered as one of the best female triathletes of all time. She won a total of 104 of the 121 races she entered. Most times, she didn’t just win, but romped in by huge margins. Her World Triathlon legacy includes becoming the very first World Triathlon (ITU) Champion, at the 1989 event in Avignon, France. She also competed in the early days of the ITU World Cup Series, entering three races and winning those too.
She was also a 2 x Ironman World Champion and the first woman ever to finish an IRONMAN in less than 10 hours which led to her winning the first world triathlon title.
Even in 1989, there were very few women or men who could win at the Ironman and the Olympic distance. At her best, Baker dominated long and short in swim, bike and run. She also struck fear into the hearts of her competitors.
Erin Baker was named “Triathlete of the Decade” by American magazine Triathlete. The magazine commented on her success by saying, “We’ve stopped trying to figure Erin out, we just accept her as the best female triathlete that ever lived”.
In the 1993 New Year Honours, Baker was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), for services as a triathlete.
Erin Baker was a trail-blazer for equality in triathlon, being incensed over the Hawaii Ironman where the winner of the men’s division received a car and the women’s winner nothing. Over the years she fought a bitter fight to get equal prize money for females which, is a given today, but was not the case in the 1980’s/90’s.
She had a very strong sense of justice to the extent where she boycotted many races at her own detriment over the issue of prize money. While the sport of triathlon today can rightly boast of treating men and women equally, that wasn’t always that way.
When it was announced that the inaugural 1989 ITU World Championship event in Avignon, France would have more prize money for men, she doggedly demanded in her outspoken manner that the then ITU President Les McDonald fix it—and fix it he did with equal prize money for both men and women.
In 2014, she was inducted into the World Triathlon (ITU) inaugural Hall of Fame in recognition of her putting Triathlon onto the World Map.
Her morals for fighting for human rights extended to world events which limited her competing in the United States for 5 years because of a criminal conviction, she received while apartheid protesting against the 1981 Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand. Scorned upon at the time her actions today would be viewed as heroic.
Erin Baker MBE (born 23 May 1961) was born in 1961 in Kaiapoi, New Zealand. Baker is one of eight children, and her siblings include Phillipa Baker (New Zealand rower and 1991 Halberg award winner) and Kathy and Maureen who both won national titles in swimming and aerobics.
She controlled and developed her successful career by self-training, stating “I was self-trained. I just trained as much as my body would handle, and that was a shit load. I trained and trained, and I trained more if I had time. I never got injured so I would often do more in case somebody else was training while I was resting”.
She is not just a legend for being one of the toughest women competitors the sport has ever known, but as an activist for the human rights of those less fortunate, Erin Baker was a woman well ahead of her time.
