Kevin Moats Has Died of Cancer
Kevin Moats, a fixture in triathlon since its early days and one of its most controversial personalities, passed away of cancer last Thursday according to multiple sources.
Moats was 67 years old and was in Kona, Hawaii when he died. He discovered last year that he had stage-4 melanoma. According to one source he was told that he had 3 to 6 months to live. Another who knew him well said that he had “high hopes of beating it” but to no avail.
Kevin Moats was a highly regarded pro triathlete in the 1980s, placing 11th at the Hawaiian IRONMAN World Championship in 1988. He continued on as a force in age group racing, remaining at the top of each age group through almost 4 decades. He was particularly fast in the run and had a marathon PR during his prime in the low-2:20s. During that 1988 IRONMAN only Mark Allen had a faster run among those in the top-15. He was at times an IRONMAN Kona course record holder for his age group, and had roughly a half-dozen IRONMAN World Championship titles.
He was at the same time reviled by many for racing behavior considered either against the ethics or the rules of the sport. He was notorious for his use of a rear-view mirror on his bike, widely interpreted by his rivals as a method for spotting approaching race marshals. More so he became persona non grata for a pair of doping violations, in 2012 and 2018. The last violation was for 8 years, at which point Moats announced his retirement from triathlon.
But his retirement was from racing, not training. He was by one account training on the Kona course through his cancer from his original diagnosis (one source said in October of 2021) up until 40 days before his passing, when “things went south quickly.”
Moats was deeply tanned but was blonde-haired and had a fair complexion. Accordingly, he went to his dermatologist regularly but those appointments reportedly ceased or became infrequent during the COVID pandemic. He was reported to have said: The thing I loved the most also killed me.
PHOTO: Tim Carlson
