Longtime Madison Latino leader Baltazar De Anda Santana has been training since January to participate in the Ironman Wisconsin 2024 on Sunday, 140.6 miles of running, biking, and swimming in the beautiful city of Madison.
For the last 5 years or so, he has been competing in Ironman competitions because he wants to be healthy and he wants to test himself but there is another important reason why he is dedicating a good portion of his life to biking, running, and cycling.
“The biggest reason I do this is for representation in the sport,” De Anda Santana tells Madison365. “One thing I always wonder is, ‘How come there aren’t more of us here?’ I didn’t see many people out there who looked like me who were running, biking and swimming.
Triathlon competitors are overall very white, mostly male, and generally pretty well-off financially. When he first started a few years back, he only knew of two Latinos who had completed the Ironman in Madison. De Anda Santana says that he will be participating in this weekend’s Ironman for his Latinx, gay, and undocumented families here in Madison and beyond. He says that his goal is to finish the Ironman in between 16.5 and 17 hours.
“It’s not going to be easy. But I want to make sure I have that can-do attitude so that I can complete this,” De Anda Santana says. “I have previously finished in 13 hours and 15 hours when I was younger and in better shape, but I want to be realistic and really approach this with a humble attitude. I feel like this is going to be a great opportunity.
“I really appreciate the community support I’ve received while doing the Ironman,” he adds.
De Anda Santana is a longtime Madison-area Latino leader and the co-founder and former executive director of the Latino Academy of Workforce Development, an organization whose mission is to strengthen diverse communities by providing linguistically and culturally competent adult education programming that advances opportunities to ensure that individuals and families thrive socially, economically, and civically.
It’s been rather recent in his life when started to get into biking, running, cycling, and training for the Ironman.
“My husband is the one who introduced me to Ironman. Back in the day, we used to go on Sundays with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other hand and we would sit down on State Street and cheer on people in the Ironman,” remembers De Anda Santana, smiling. “I remember staying there late one year and seeing people competing who looked like me – they didn’t have the stereotypical Ironman body. And that’s when I told my husband, ‘I think I want to do this!’
As a young gay boy in rural Mexico, De Anda Santana adds, he was often teased by his friends, who told him he couldn’t do sports because he was gay.
“Those comments stayed with me, lingering in the back of my mind. So every time I reach mile 18 of the run — the most challenging mile for me — I use positive thinking,” he says. “I think of all those people telling me I coudn’t do this and I push on and it inspires me. So the whole representation for the LGBTQ community is very important for me.”
Every year, De Anda Santana, who was an undocumented immigrant for 16 years in America before gaining citizenship in 2019, participates in Ironman to honor the undocumented community everywhere, too.
“The least I can do is offer those 17 hours as a small sacrifice for the many sacrifices our community endures while living in the shadows,” he says. “During these election times, our undocumented community is often portrayed as criminals, but that portrayal is far from the truth. Our undocumented community is a working community with a passion for building a home and a future in this country.
“I will forever honor my journey of crossing the Mexican-American border in hopes of a better life,” he continues. “This year is especially important to me because our undocumented community is being criminalized, and we must work tirelessly to protect their American dream. Every step of my run this year will be dedicated to honoring the journeys our undocumented community members have undertaken to achieve their American dream.”
On Sunday, Ironman competitors will swim in Lake Monona, bike through hilly farmlands around Verona, and finish a marathon just past the Capitol Square in downtown Madison. De Anda Santana is hoping that his presence will encourage others to become Ironman triathletes, too.
“Our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities won’t truly thrive until we’re represented in politics, socio-economics, and yes, even in sports. We need to be where the conversations happen,” De Anda Santana says. “We are tired of sitting at the children’s table. The time has come for us to take our place at the adults’ table, and sometimes that starts with something as simple as being represented in an Ironman race.
“I want to show that representation matters,” he adds. “I look forward to representing my Mexican community, my Latino community and my gay community on Sunday.”
