“They asked me to come back to the 25th anniversary, and I said, ‘Of course,'” he said on Friday, July 12, speaking from his home in San Diego, California. “So we worked something out, and I’m coming back.”

When Reilly retired at the end of 2022, he had announced 214 Ironman races worldwide since 1989, including 33 Ironman World Championship events. He had never been to Lake Placid until the first Ironman race here in 1999.

“I obviously heard about it, the Olympic village and all that good stuff, but when you get there, you become infatuated with it,” he said. “And the more and more athletes that came, they just kept talking with other athletes all over the world, ‘Hey, you’ve got to do Lake Placid.’ And I knew from the first year that I wanted to work that event every year. Not only is it like going home, I have so many friends there, the town and people kind of know who I am. It’s just a lovely atmosphere to have an event.”

Reflecting on 25 years of Ironman Lake Placid, Reilly said the best change in this race is its ever-growing popularity and people discovering the community.

By the time he arrived at Lake Placid, Reilly had already coined his catch phrase, “You are an Ironman!” He says the finisher’s name before saying those four words.

“I call that call an audio diploma,” Reilly said. “They’re hearing something for the first time that they will have for the rest of their lives, and no one can ever take it away from them.”

Reilly has a whole chapter in his memoir, “Mike Reilly: Finding My Voice,” about the phrase, and he said it was “pure serendipity” when he first said those words. The year was 1991. His friend, Dan Trone, was competing in the World Championship and didn’t think he could finish.

“I told him before the race, ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to be an Ironman. You’ll do it. You’ll finish,'” Reilly told the News. “So when he came in, I was kind of putting it in his face. I called his name and said, ‘Hey, you ARE an Ironman.’ And the crowd reacted like the guy won the race. And I’m going, ‘Whoa, OK.’ I didn’t sit up at night saying, ‘What am I going to say to everybody besides congratulations or you’re a winner or job well done.’ When I said those four words, I realized, ‘Oh my gosh, they ARE an Ironman.’ And I get to tell them that. And now they realize it. I’ve said that almost half a million times, and it never gets old.”

Reilly’s race day starts around 5 a.m., which is about 90 minutes before the professionals begin their 2.4-mile swim. He spends the first part of the day making announcements to athletes and spectators. He calls the swim, bike and run — ending at the finish line at the Olympic Speedskating Oval, where he says “You are an Ironman!”

“I call it a long, great day. The hours go by pretty quick,” Reilly said. “It’s never been daunting to me that it’s a longer day because every piece of the day has its own story. Every athlete I have has their own story. Every athlete’s name I call, they have their own story. It’s kind of broken down into a book for every person. I look at it that way.”

Reilly explained that it’s not a long day when he feels all the passion and the emotion of the athletes and their families, “when some people are doing something that they never, ever thought that they could ever do. They even had family and friends tell them that they couldn’t do it. So when they come across the finish line, for a lot of them, it’s the greatest day of their life because they accomplished something that they didn’t think they could do.”

The final hour comes along fast for Reilly.

“I go, ‘Oh my gosh, I wish I could go longer. I wish we could have more of this,'” he said. “It is pretty special when the final couple of hours tick down, people coming in, you can see they’re struggling mightily to get there. I’ve always called it the magical hours, and the magic in those hours is people doing the impossible.”

The Ironman races never got complacent for him.

“I knew I was having a one-on-one conversation … with that person in front of me at the finish line,” he said, “and when I called them an Ironman, not only for them but their family and their friends and the people at the finish line. When the internet came in heavy duty broadcasting races live across the internet, I knew people all over the world were going to be calling this person an Ironman. Their grandmother could be in Germany, and she’s hearing it.”

“Mike Reilly: Finding My Voice” is available at The Bookstore Plus.