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For four decades, the Timex Ironman watch has been intrinsically linked to the triathlon world. You’d be hard-pressed to find a runner or triathlete in the 1980s or 1990s who didn’t have one of these steel gray watches on their wrist. But how did this relationship start in the first place—and how has it persisted to this day, now 40 years later? Here, we take a look back at the history of the Timex Ironman Watch.
When I first started running as a freshman in high school, my parents bought me a Timex Ironman Watch. Up until that point, when I went out for a run, I’d check the time on the microwave in our kitchen before I left and check the time again when I got back. Later, when my Dad returned from work, I’d have him drive the exact route I covered, closely monitoring the car’s odometer to get the distance of the run. A little simple math later, and I had a decent sense of my average minutes-per-mile pace.
But then—perhaps as a way to eliminate those after-hour drives—I received the watch. (And though it couldn’t tell me how far I ran, at least I could easily time my runs and get splits and play with the cool Indiglo backlight.) It was the men’s version, big and hefty on my narrow 14-year-old wrist. But wearing it made me feel legit; like a real runner.
That was in 1993, when the Timex Ironman Watch was required uniform in the endurance world. At the time, Timex had the lion’s share of the sports watch market, with its reach extending beyond just athletes. That same year, President Bill Clinton—a hobby jogger known to log miles around Washington, D.C. during his time in the White House—wore a Timex Ironman to his inaugural ball, marking the first digital watch to be worn by a president. Critics called the accessory an “unsightly blemish” and a “wrist gargoyle.” Timex called it a marketing coup.
Not like they needed much help in the marketing department. At that point, the company had been riding the wave of what they called the “world’s first sports watch,” which had become the best-selling watch in the United States within a year of its release in 1986. By the early 1990s, priced at $39.95, the Timex Ironman was selling about 500,000 units a year. And between 1992 and 1995, following the introduction ofIndiglo—a cutting-edge technology at the time—the line quadrupled in growth, becoming a multi-million dollar business.
Out of Ironman, a watch is born
But how did Ironman get involved with this watch, anyway? The story goes that in the mid-1980s, Fred Olsen, Timex’s Norwegian owner, was the first to dream up the concept of a sports watch. Then, Mario Sabatini, a Timex product manager who went on to become a vice president at the company, picked up on the buzz of this epic event called the Hawaii Ironman, and went to work on a digital product that could tap into this emerging market of endurance sports.
His intent? To create a watch with the features of a stopwatch for the “serious athlete.” In fact, some of the initial concept and design of the watch came from input from athletes like Mary Decker-Slaney and Alberto Salazar, both top American runners at the time, who stressed the importance of having access to lap splits while doing interval training. To market to triathletes, it also needed to be water resistant and have a battery that could last the duration of an Ironman triathlon.
In 1984, armed with 1,500 “Timex Triathlon” watches, Sabatini hit up the Hawaii Ironman and sold every single unit, for $34.95 each. He was on to something, and Ironman took note.
“Timex Triathlon was so wildly successful that Ironman reached out,” said Shawn Lawson-Cummings, Timex Senior Vice President, of the partnership that gave Timex the rights to use the word Ironman on its product. “It made sense to partner together to then reintroduce the product as Timex Ironman. And so we did that in 1986, and we’ve been working together ever since.”
And as Ironman grew, so did the watch. Although initially marketed to endurance athletes—and to men, at least if you look atone of the ad campaigns—the watch began to pop up on everyone from high school athletes like me, to, well, the president of the United States.
“People liked the durability and the functionality,” Lawson-Cummings said. “It’s one of those kinds of things where if you are a construction worker, or in law enforcement, or you’re an umpire, or you’re just running around gardening, this is a product that is tried and true and clearly has stood the test of time.”
What’s old is new again
Over the years, Timex has introduced a variety of other sports watches, like theR300, a GPS-enabled smartwatch (which was a hit with some reviewers but not so much with consumers) theT300, an activity tracker that runs on a coin cell battery and can last for years, and slimmer, more colorful models designed for women. And in 2023, Timex had collabs with lifestyle brandsHuckberryandJames Brand, both capitalizing on the 90s nostalgia trend. (The James Brand x Timex watch is reviewedhere in our 2024 annual smartwatch roundup. – Ed)
Otherwise, whether it’s the affordable price point (now $30-$50) or the company’s 40-year-old business relationship with Ironman, not much about the watch has changed—and that’s intentional, Lawson-Cummings added.
“Our consumer basically told us that we like what you do and we want you to keep doing it,” she said. “We’ve carved out a space where we are the number one. And so that is where we’ve decided to stay.”
