COEUR d'ALENE - A heartwarming tale from a former Ironman Coeur d'Alene men's champion was told Friday at the Rotary Bandshell at City Park.

Andy Potts, a 37-year-old triathlete running Sunday in his second Ironman Coeur d'Alene, shared a story after a press conference featuring four professional triathletes, including defending men's champion Ben Hoffman, and defending women's champ Heather Wurtele.

Potts talked about his son, Boston, who was 3 years old when Potts won the triathlon of June 27, 2010.

"I got tackled by my son," Potts said. "Ironman had just changed the rule where you can't cross the line with your kids. So if you cross the line with your kids in Ironman, you got disqualified. So they just changed the rule (before the 2010 triathlon), so they were waiting for me right at the finish line and I was exhausted and my 3-year-old was strong enough and I was weak enough to get tackled by him. So he tackled me and I got a really nice picture of it."

Memories for roughly 2,400 triathletes and fans strewn across the city will undoubtedly be a part of the event.

Andy Potts won in 2010 with an overall time of 8 hours, 24 minutes, 40 seconds, which at the time was a course record. He finished 22nd in the triathlon in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

Ironman Coeur d'Alene is in its 12th year, and this year each winner will take home $75,000.

Ironman Coeur d'Alene is scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. with a 2.4-mile swim right off the city beach, followed by a 112-mile bicycle ride down Coeur d'Alene Lake Drive and back down U.S. 95 south, and finish with a 26.2-mile marathon run through downtown, going east on Coeur d'Alene Lake Drive before coming back through downtown. The competitors will finish on Sherman Avenue, just before First Street, directly across from the Bonsai Bistro restaurant.

"Specifically this race has two loops," Potts said. "So mentally, that makes it easier to break out. The big thing is the community. We have a ton of support here. I swear, it feels like everybody in Coeur d'Alene comes out on the streets."

The male professional athletes will compete for one of 50 spots for the Ironman World Championships, set for Oct. 11 in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, located on the west side of the main island. Potts is 29th in the men's standings and Hoffman is 40th.

The female athletes are competing for one of 35 spots, with Ironman Cd'A participants Kelly Williamson 34th and Wurtele 38th, or 250 points away from 35th.

Hoffman, 30, won last year's race with a course record of 8:17.31. In order to defend his title, the four-time Ironman race champion will have to fend off several contenders, including Ukranian triathlete Viktor Zyemtsev (last year's runner-up who won in 2012) and Matt Russell, the fourth-place finisher last year in Coeur d'Alene.

Hoffman graduated from the University of Montana and lives in Boulder, Colo.

"It's still a unique opportunity to defend a title," Hoffman said. "I definitely am aware of my competition. But you just do your race. I realized how bad the last five or six minutes of my marathon was. You still have self-doubt and you question your ability."

Wurtele, from Victoria, Canada, set the women's course record in 9:16.02. Her husband, Trevor, also runs Ironman triathlons and half-Iromans but will not compete Sunday.

"I really love the course here," Wurtele said. "Every time I toe the course in Ironman, I'm starting to believe I can win them. I've had my challenges at this race, I've had a flat, I had to stop with a little accident, so I was surprised I set the course record. Hopefully I can have an uneventful bike ride this year and if the conditions are good, maybe there will be some more course records broken this year."

Wurtele talked about the fact the local weather forecast will be much cooler than last year, with temperatures back then reaching into the late 80s and early 90s.

According to The Weather Channel's website, this year's hourly forecast for Sunday will be in the early 50s at 6 a.m. and in the mid- to upper-60s in the afternoon. The forecast also calls for a sunny morning and a 30 percent chance of rain in the early- to mid-afternoon.

"The cooler temperatures are more pleasing," Wurtele said. "It's not a battle versus the elements. I like it when it's colder, because with your nutrition you get more calories into your body, while you need to hydrate more when it's hotter. You just focus on race day. You can't control the weather; you can control what you do."

Williamson, who won this year's Memorial Hermann Ironman Texas - located in The Woodlands, Texas, roughly 30 miles north of Houston - was 15th at the 2012 Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii (9:46).

The last time Williamson competed in Ironman Coeur d'Alene was in 2010, when she finished third (9:39).

"I want to get to Kona," Williamson said. "I knew this was the race to get to Kona."

Also at the press conference were two first-time Ironman triathletes raising money for the Ironman foundation. Tom deTar of Post Falls, an ear, nose and throat surgeon, has raised nearly $21,000 for the Anna Schindler Foundation, which supports families in the Inland Northwest who have children with cancer.

Noah Cooper, the executive news director for KREM 2 News in Spokane, has raised more than $7,000 for Team Gleason and ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which affects nerve cells in the brain.