Shay hopes to raise $100,000 for Shriners Children’s.
The air temperature will likely plunge well below zero. 20-mile-per-hour winds will sweep across one of the most inhospitable places on Earth as Shay Eskew competes in the world’s first Antarctic triathlon. But for the former Shriners Children’s burn patient, the race won’t even be close to the toughest challenge he has faced.
More than four decades ago, 8-year-old Shay stood in his front yard pouring water over himself and a friend after having been accidentally set afire by a neighbor’s child. He was badly burned, with injuries covering more than 65% of his body. His future – and his survival – was anything but certain.
What followed were years of surgeries, rehabilitation and recovery that would ultimately transform a burn survivor into a world-class endurance athlete, an author and motivational speaker and, perhaps his proudest accomplishment, a father of five who tries to lead by example.
In February and March 2027, Shay, now 52, will take part in the inaugural Antarctic 100 Triathlon, a 100-kilometer extreme endurance event featuring a one-kilometer swim in 33-degree water, a 66-kilometer bike ride and a 33-kilometer run across the frozen Antarctic landscape. He will be one of just 50 athletes from across the world pushing themselves to the extreme to do what’s never been done before.
But for Shay, the challenge is about far more than crossing another finish line. Through his participation in the race, he hopes to raise $100,000 for Shriners Children’s and give back to the organization he says, without a doubt, changed the trajectory of his life.
Shay grew up in Decatur, Georgia, with protective parents who did everything they could to shield their son from harm. He was your typical 8-year-old boy who loved riding bikes and playing in the neighborhood. It was August 1982 when his mother asked him to warn neighbors about an aggressive yellowjacket’s nest near their driveway. What happened next would alter the course of Shay’s life.
When a neighbor attempted to destroy the nest using gasoline, Shay and his friend were inadvertently splashed. The gas landed on a match still flickering near the nest and ignited. They were instantly engulfed in flames. Thankfully, Shay remembered to stop, drop and roll. Despite his injuries, he ran for a garden hose and extinguished the fire on his friend.
“I remember touching my head and all my hair came out,” Shay said.
He was rushed to a trauma center in Atlanta before an unexpected call changed everything.
“The Yaarab Shriners in downtown Atlanta heard about our story, reached out to my parents and said, ‘Hey, we would love to take care of Shay. We have a burn hospital in Cincinnati focused on children,’” Shay said. “So, my first ever plane ride was on a gurney in a small plane going to Ohio.”
Shay would spend 10 weeks as an inpatient there. It wasn’t the easiest journey and, as is often the case with complex burn injuries, there were challenges along the way. An infection led to the amputation of his right ear. Skin grafts didn’t take as well as they should have, and he suffered from hypertrophic scarring. Scar tissue had fused his right arm to his body, and it took more than three years before he could lift it over his head again. He had to learn how to write left-handed to finish the third grade.
Over the course of his childhood and young adulthood, he underwent dozens of reconstructive procedures. Today, he has undergone 44 surgeries related to his injuries, with, ironically, the most recent one being 44 years to the day from being burned.
We knew we were getting the best care in the world.
While Shay vividly remembers the physical pain of recovery, it is the people who cared for him at Shriners Children’s who stand out most.
“I remember the nurses were funny. They were great. We’d kid around,” he said. “But it was also serious. We had a job to do.”
One nurse in particular, a woman named Betty, became a lasting symbol of the culture he experienced at Shriners Children’s.
“Every time I said, ‘I can’t do this,’ it was, ‘Oh yes, you’re going to do this,’” Eskew said. “Nothing was about negotiating. It was like, ‘Hey, we’re doing this because we care about you. We’re getting you back out there.’”
That philosophy helped shape the mindset Shay has carried the rest of his life.
“I think it was reinforced that I could do anything I wanted to do if I was willing to put in the work.”
Shriners Children's treated him until he was 21, providing countless compression garments and plastic orthotic braces for his face, neck and chest, performing more than 30 surgeries and ensuring that the care team was by his side all along the way.
“We knew we were getting the best care in the world,” he said.
That experience remains one of the reasons he feels so passionate about supporting Shriners Children’s today and giving to the healthcare organization’s mission of providing care regardless of a family’s ability to pay or insurance status.
But Shay said it would have been impossible for him to have envisioned any of this in 1982.
Returning to school was difficult. Shay wore custom compression garments that stretched from his ankles to his neck, along with plastic braces and a face mask. He remembers classmates whispering and staring. Yet instead of withdrawing, he found an outlet through sports.
First came baseball. Then football. Then wrestling.
“I felt like wrestling was built just for me,” he said. “No longer was it about who’s the fastest, who’s the biggest. It was more about who could take the most pain, and I really felt like being a burn patient had prepared me for this sport.”
That resilience has fueled his lifetime of athletic achievements.
Shay became a two-time state-placing wrestler, inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame under the Medal of Courage designation, won three collegiate boxing championships and eventually discovered endurance sports. The child who was once told he would never be a competitive athlete has gone on to complete more than 56 IRONMAN/IRONMAN 70.3 races, marathons on all seven continents and 14 world championship finish lines across six continents. All this is despite the fact that he has no nerves or sweat glands in about one-third of his body.
Yet Shay sees his accomplishments as evidence of something larger than athletic ability and something that grew from the tragedy that he refused to allow define his life.
“My burn injury made me the kind of athlete I needed to be. It allowed me to tap into an inner strength that I didn’t know existed,” he said. “Like so many things in life, sports are about mental toughness and resilience. It is about the ability to turn off your brain telling you that you cannot do something.”
The upcoming Antarctica triathlon represents another chance to push his limits, but it also represents an opportunity to lift others.
“Hopefully I can help inspire other Shriners patients or children facing adversity,” Shay said. “If you have gone through some traumatic events in your life, it’s preparing you for something greater. You have to believe and embrace it.”
That message sits at the heart of his fundraising campaign.
“It’s about fueling the dream,” he said. “When I was a kid, there were no success stories. Nobody said, ‘Hey, Shay, look what Jim did. You too can have this life.’ That’s what I hope to do, to give these children a playbook to overcome any adversity they may face.”
For Shay, every donation is an investment in possibility. He wants children facing medically complex conditions to understand that what they are experiencing today does not have to define their future.
“What you went through is giving you some gifts that most people in the world will never have,” he said.
Preparing for Antarctica means taking everything he has accomplished in his athletic pursuits to a whole new level. Shay is training through cold-water immersion, winter lake swims and ice-bath sessions to prepare for what will be the most extreme and physically demanding event of his career.
He readily admits the challenge is intimidating.
“I’m scared to death. I hate cold water,” he said. “I can’t even fathom how I’m going to swim in 33-degree water. But I’m all in.”
If successful, Shay could become one of the first athletes ever to complete an organized triathlon on all seven continents. But whether he crosses the finish line or not, he already knows why he’s going.
“If you would tell me when I was 8 years old, ‘Fast forward 44 years from now, you’re going to be doing the world’s first triathlon in Antarctica,’ I’d say you are crazy,” he said. “I couldn’t even dress myself. And now I’m going to compete in the most extreme environment in the world.”
For the boy who once lay in a hospital bed wondering what his future might look like, Antarctica represents far more than another athletic challenge. It is a tribute to the caregivers who believed in him, a thank-you to the organization that helped him reclaim his life, and a chance to ensure other children receive the same opportunity.
“The Shriners themselves heard about a kid in need and made it happen. They didn’t ask questions and did what they needed to make sure this family was taken care of,” Shay said, drawing on his sports background for an analogy. “It was the same for the medical team. The big word in healthcare now is patient experience. And that’s where Shriners Children’s just knocks it out of the park.”
Eskew’s goal is to raise $100,000 for Shriners Children’s through his participation in the A100 | Antarctic Triathlon. Gifts will help provide specialized pediatric care for children with burn injuries, orthopedic conditions, spinal cord injuries, craniofacial differences and other complex medical needs, regardless of a family’s ability to pay or insurance status. To learn more or support Shay, visit his fundraiser.
