Julie Moss

It wasn't�the ending she'd envisioned for her first Ironman triathlon. Julie Moss was leading the '82 event in Hawaii, less than 500 yards from the finish, when she felt her legs buckle and her body give out. She collapsed, then got up, only to fall again and again. Desperate to complete the race, Moss crawled the last 15 feet, reaching out with her left hand to touch the line, 31 seconds after another competitor had crossed it. "I just wanted to get across the finish and start the next phase of my life," says Moss, 48.

Two weeks later the Ironman aired on ABC's Wide World of Sports. Within hours the network was flooded with calls from viewers wondering if Moss had survived the grueling ordeal. In response ABC flew her to its New York studio for an interview with Jim McKay. Then came numerous television appearances and even a TV movie based loosely on her experience. Says Moss, "I fell into being famous--literally."

Moss was a 23-year-old student when she took up triathlon as research for a thesis in exercise physiology. But after stardom struck, she pursued a pro career in the nascent sport. In 1982 she met elite triathlete Mark Allen; the two married in '89 and had a son, Mats. Moss still runs the occasional triathlon and works as a race announcer, and though she and Allen divorced in 2002, they live near each other in Santa Cruz, Calif., and share parenting duties. And her fame endures: Moss's performance of 25 years ago, which helped lift triathlon into the mainstream, has been preserved on YouTube and seen by tens of thousands. "What I did that day wasn't pretty to see," she says. "What shined through was the humanness of my struggle. That determination is inside everybody."