Team Hoyt - It's Only A Mountain

October 19, 2006 10:53 AM

Dick and Rick Hoyt are a father-and-son team from Massachusetts who together compete just about continuously in marathon races. And if they’re not in a marathon they are in a triathlon — that daunting, almost superhuman, combination of 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of bicycling, and 2.4 miles of swimming. Together they have climbed mountains, and once trekked 3,735 miles across America.

It’s a remarkable record of exertion — all the more so when you consider that Rick can't walk or talk.

Quite possibly one of the most inspirational stories that I've ever encountered -- Team Hoyt.
posted by purephase (20 comments total)

Rick Hoyt was disabled at birth by a lack of oxygen to his brain. When a team of engineers recognized that his sense of humour indicated intelligence, Rick was given a special computer to assist in communcation. Soon, his avid fervour for sports culminated in father and son entering a 5-mile benefit run that has since expanded into a 25-year career that has inspired thousands.

When Rick (43) was asked what one thing he wished he could give his father Dick (65) he responded, "The thing I'd most like is that my dad would sit in the chair and I would push him once."

Video links:
1, 2, 3
posted by purephase at 10:55 AM on October 19, 2006

This kinda makes me miss Metafilter's own Team Hoyt.
posted by thirteenkiller at 11:06 AM on October 19, 2006

Ha, Dick + Hoyt =dhoyt
posted by Peter H at 11:14 AM on October 19, 2006

Now we know what dhoyt was doing when he wasn't in ur metafilter sp00fing ur d00ds.
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:15 AM on October 19, 2006

D'oh.
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:16 AM on October 19, 2006

*prepares expose on wayward daughter Jennifer Leigh Hoyt-Hallorobots*
posted by cortex at 11:29 AM on October 19, 2006

Dick, the father, is the real inspiration. He's the one who is actually running the marathons and swimming the triathlons, pulling Rick around and never tiring... Rick says his father even taught himself to swim and trained for five hours a day when they decided to attempt the triathlons. The way Dick continually exerts himself and sacrifices himself for his son, when he could have ignored Rick like many fathers... it's an example for us all. When other people doubted that Rick was even sapient, Dick always believed in Rick's intelligence and his abilities, and thanks to his determination Rick is a college graduate, and a national phenomenon. Great post.
posted by purple_frogs at 12:06 PM on October 19, 2006

Wow. Just...wow.

Great post!
posted by djeo at 12:26 PM on October 19, 2006

.
posted by No Robots at 12:32 PM on October 19, 2006

Every year the crowds lining the route of the Boston Marathon go nuts when the Hoyts pass by. They are one of the most cherished traditions of the race.
posted by ericb at 12:33 PM on October 19, 2006

Is it to late to make a dhoyt joke?
posted by delmoi at 12:37 PM on October 19, 2006

echoing ericb....it's pretty amazing. They leave a trail of teary onlookers behind them for 26 miles every year.
posted by tristeza at 2:13 PM on October 19, 2006

Remember when there was only one set of footprints in the sand?

That's when I was carrying you!
posted by isopraxis at 2:16 PM on October 19, 2006

Amazing. Thanks, purephase.
posted by scody at 3:20 PM on October 19, 2006

There's no "I" in team, Rick.
posted by Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson at 3:53 PM on October 19, 2006

Very inspiring.

Perhaps many years from now when his father's strength has waned and he himself is confined to a wheelchair, medicine and/or bionics will have advanced to the point that Rick himself will be able to jog down the road, pushing the man who for so many years carried his son past cheering crowds.

but then zoinks off they go, over a cliff. Whoops!
posted by CynicalKnight at 4:15 PM on October 19, 2006

Is it to late to make a dhoyt joke?

Yes. Has been for months.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:23 PM on October 19, 2006

This is the 2nd post today that was an HBO Real Sports story. They won a Sports Emmy for it.
posted by smackfu at 4:34 PM on October 19, 2006

I was pretty amazed when I first learned about this. Then I learned that this compulsion (if anyone has a better term I'm open) cost Rick his marriage to Dick's mom. Kind of tempered my initial enthusiasm for Team Hoyt.
posted by bpm140 at 7:43 PM on October 19, 2006

Yeah, I don't see why the father's bizarre compulsion is a good thing.
posted by blasdelf at 10:35 PM on October 19, 2006