A truely amazing story

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Read this and then watch the video

 

 

 

Strongest Dad in the World

 

 

 

 

 

FROM SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, By Rick Reilly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 o