Under an overcast but clearing sky, more than 500 people gathered on the morning of July 4 to run a mile, paddle a mile and drink a six-pack of beer as quickly as possible in the largest Hermosa Beach Ironman in the event’s 41-year history. Hundreds of people left the beach buzzed, while thousands of dollars were raised for charity.
Perennial contender Jeff Bellandi, owner of Watermans bar and restaurant, won the men’s division – his third victory in four years. Chris Brown, president of the California Beach Volleyball Association, who also previously won the event, took second. Bellandi trailed Brown coming out of the water, but surged ahead when he chugged his six Michelob Ultra beers in 2 minutes and 36 seconds, which he was told set a new record.
“Chris came in from the water before me,” Bellandi said. “We were going head to head, drinking our beers. We laid it all out there.”
Bellandi said he and Brown trained for the event the day before with a full day of ace volleyball, in which teams must drink a full beer every time the volleyball lands on their side untouched.
In the women’s division, Andrea Bates unseated last year’s champion, Annie Seawright, who finished second. Bates is a former Hermosa resident and previous Ironman champion who moved to Texas for a job in the healthcare industry. She came back in town for the Ironman and her victory also came down to the all-important beer chug.
“Annie’s a better athlete. She beat me on the run and the paddle,” Bates said of Seawright. “But I’m a better drinker.”
The race kicked off shortly before 9 a.m. with the mile run on the hard sand along the water’s edge. But the competition really got underway when the athletes came back from their mile paddle, stashed their surfboards and began chugging a six-pack of their choice as about 35 judges timed them with stopwatches.
Numerous competitors, exhausted from the paddle or the night before, chose to abandon any hope of actually winning the race and instead focused on winning the best puke award. (Pukers are disqualified from winning the main event). Many of them directed puke at their friends, who returned the favor.
Seasoned competitors such as event organizer and former Hermosa Councilman Bob “Burgie” Benz opted for light beer. Benz chose Costco’s private label, Kirkland’s Signature Light, which he supplemented with tequila shots. Benz said he finished his beers in less than 3 minutes.
Tom Dunbabin, a partner in King Harbor Brewery, took a different approach, opting for 32 oz. containers of the brewery’s Ironman Lager. He finished only two of them. Next year, the brewery plans to sell 12 oz. cans of the lager at Boccato’s Groceries, just down the street from the starting line at 30th Street and The Strand.
The event was a rare, once-a-year opportunity for residents to openly disregard Hermosa’s ban on drinking on the beach – no red solo cups needed. A couple of police officers observed the event from a nearby lifeguard tower or a four wheel drive patrolling the sand, but there was no effort to curtail the merriment.
“Today is an exception to the rule,” said Councilman Hany Fangary, who watched the event from the front row, behind a rope that separated competitors from spectators.
Participants were energized throughout the event by music that blared from the speakers, including Benz’s favorite disco anthem, “Anytime Is Party Time.” There was also an “America the Beautiful” singalong. Hermosa punk band The STD’s closed the event out by playing a testosterone-laden set that incited a mosh pit on the beach, with shirtless revelers running in circles and bashing up against one another.
“It’s the last bastion of a drunken good time,” said Benz, who has competed in the Ironman for somewhere between 35 and 40 years. “You don’t see anything like this anywhere. Where else do you have 500 people getting blitzed as fast as possible on beer and then puking on each other? It’s a tradition. Everything else is so tightly organized and controlled.”
The Hermosa City Council periodically threatened to end the bacchanalia many years ago, until Benz was elected to the city council in 1991. Since then, the event has been preserved as part of Hermosa’s distinct culture. The Hermosa Beach museum is currently planning an exhibit on the Ironman.
Benz is the front man for an organizing committee of between four and five people – “depending on who’s sober at the time” – who stage it all. Despite the organizers being admittedly unorganized, the event went off perfectly and without a hitch this year, he said.
Participants paid a $30 fee that goes towards covering overhead and expenses, with the remaining funds going to a number of charities. This year, between $5,000 and $8,000 was raised for charity, Benz said. The largest share is going to a memorial foundation set up to honor Doug Schneider, the Hermosan killed late last year in a dirt bike accident.
Other charities that benefit from funds include the Veronica Legacy Foundation, which supports the poor and homeless in the South Bay, and the Hermosa Beach Historical Society. Clothing company Matix was the sponsor for this year’s event and helped with set-up and T-shirts.
Some locals grumbled that the Ironman has grown as much as it has, recalling a time when only about 30 or 40 people competed and all the competitors were from Hermosa and knew one another. But Benz said limiting entries would make the event more stressful, and wouldn’t be worth the hassle. An estimated 540 people competed this year, Benz said.
“It was the biggest [ever],” he said. “We talked about limiting it because it’s so big, but on the other hand, ‘How do you do it?’ It’s supposed to be a non-stress event. As far as the drunks and losers who run this thing, they’re not willing to do that. At the end of the day, you might end up meeting people.”
A little after 10 a.m., the event wrapped up and buzzed participants carried their surfboards back to The Strand. Benz said he took a brief nap before resuming a celebration that took him to the North End and various Strand houses.
“I’m somewhat comatose,” Benz said on Monday morning. “I’m going to take a day off from drinking.”
