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[Gemini]

Rick Reilly - Life of Reilly - Sports Illustrated

"Strongest Dad In the World"

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay

for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in

marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a

wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming

and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars -- all in the

same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back

mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike.

Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much -- except save his

life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick

was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-

damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life," Dick says doctors told

him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an

institution."

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes

followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the

engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was

anything to help the boy communicate. "No way," Dick says he was

told. "There's nothing going on in his brain."

"Tell him a joke," Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out

a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by

touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to

communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!" And after a high school

classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a

charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that."

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker" who never ran

more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still,

he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped," Dick says. "I was

sore for two weeks."

That day changed Rick's life. "Dad," he typed, "when we were running,

it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!"

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving

Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly

shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

"No way," Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a

single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a

few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway,

then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they

ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston

the following year.

Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?"

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since

he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon?

Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour

Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud

getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't

you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way," he says.

Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling" he gets seeing Rick

with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th

Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters.

Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 -- only 35 minutes off

the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these

things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man

in a wheelchair at the time.

"No question about it," Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the

Century."

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had

a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his

arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape,"

one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago."

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in

Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland,

Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the

country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend,

including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really

wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

"The thing I'd most like," Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the

chair and I push him once."

(for pictures, see www.si.com/teamhoyt) Make sure you scroll through

all the pictures. It's awesome to look at!

Issue date: June 20, 2005

http://www.teamhoyt.com/

http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/3/3_1/dick-and-rick-hoyt-to-com.shtml

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/2005/06/13/team.hoyt/content.1.html

[Freya]

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