Karen Smyers ’83, this year’s Jake McCandless ’51 Princeton Varsity Club speaker, is a world-class triathlete. Smyers won the national championships six consecutive years, the world championships three times and the Hawaii Ironman competition once. She also survived a bike crash with an 18-wheeler truck and thyroid cancer, and sportswriter Rick Reilly named her the “triathlete most likely to be eaten alive by a shark at the Sydney Olympics.”
Known as one of the most determined athletes alive in any sport, Smyers delivered an inspirational speech on Tuesday night in Richardson Auditorium to an audience of rougly 125 people about her career and the “four P’s” it takes to succeed in both athletics and life.
“Every athlete has to put up with setbacks and challenges throughout their careers, and I think to come and listen to a speech like this can help any athlete get some perspective on things,” freshman Pete Callahan of the men’s track and field team said after the talk.
Peter Farrell, head coach of the women’s track and field team, introduced Smyers: “Karen is the person sitting next to you. She’s your teammate; she’s your friend,” he said. “Genuine, humble and down to earth.”
When she showed up at a Princeton summer triathlon camp she ran one summer, Farrell said, Smyers shocked her mostly wealthy students by arriving “with what can only be described as the bike your parents left you under the Christmas tree when you were 13.”
“It was never about the bike for Karen,” Farrell added.
Coming from a family of seven, Smyers grew up playing sports with her older siblings. “But I had a little extra competitive fire,” Smyers said.
Smyers came to Princeton to swim, but once her season was over she decided to follow in her roommate’s footsteps and walk on to Farrell’s track team.
Smyers described how she decided to become a professional athlete when she won her first triathlon and discovered that she could have actually won money if she had checked the “professional” box on the registration form. When the company she was working at in Boston went bankrupt, Smyers decided to make the transition to running triathlons full time.
“The truth is that it was fear of getting a real job,” Smyers joked.
As Smyers began training full time, she discovered that success is based on what she calls the “four P’s: perseverance, positive attitude, perspective, and passion.”
Speaking about perseverance first, Smyers explained how she got into running at Princeton and then worked on her biking when she turned professional. She talked about how she would come out of the swimming leg near the lead but become “fresh pickings for anyone out there” during the biking leg, the second portion of the triathlon.
Smyers told herself that she “had to work on my weakness,” and biking is currently her strongest component of the triathlon.
Moving on to positive attitude, Smyers admitted that her second P “somewhat comes a little naturally to me. I’ve always tended to look at the bright side of things,” she said.
After not getting recognized for her fourth-place finish at her second world championships, she came back the next year determined to make the podium. Smyers was in second place for much of the race but was passed by two other competitors midway through the running component. A male competitor also running the race reminded her that “you have to want it,” and Smyers came from behind to win her first world championship.
“I had been in a very bad space in my head and turned it around, and in doing so I won the race,” she said.
“Stuff like that is so true,” sophomore Tommy Dialynas of the men’s track and field team said. “Sometimes all you need is a little wake-up call, whether it’s something that someone said or something you realize in your own mind.”
Smyers told a similar story about her Ironman championship, and she humorously concluded that “it’s 50 percent mental and 50 percent nutrition, so if you’ve been doing the math, there’s pretty much no physical component. If you just be happy and eat healthy you can win an Ironman.”
Another important example for her was recovering after she severed her hamstring while changing a storm window in her house. Smyers and her husband decided that her recovery would be the perfect time to have their first child.
“Looking back at things that have already happened that you can’t change is so nonproductive. Always finding the silver lining is the key,” she said.
When discussing perspective, Smyers noted that during her many recoveries, “I really had to examine my life and whether coming back to the sport was worth it, and whenever I did that I said, ‘Yes.’ ”
When things got really tough, and she had to simultaneously recover from thyroid cancer and a broken collarbone, Smyers, ever the one to stay positive, said she thought, “This is okay, I’m combining rehabs.”
Smyers delivered her final message with the fourth P, passion: “I didn’t always love the training, but I’ve always loved the racing,” she told the captivated audience. “So if you can find something you’re passionate about and can make it a part of your life, I really encourage you to do so.”
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