ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, May 27, 1996 TAG: 9605300011
SECTION: NEWSFUN PAGE: NF-1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: NANCY GLEINER STAFF WRITER
This a sports story, but it's really a story about dreams and determination. Strangely enough, it starts with a little bit of math.
The prefix ``tri'' means three - triangle, triplets, triathletes. That last word doesn't mean three athletes, though that's what this story is about - three brothers who are triathletes who compete in triathlons.
Triathlons combine three events - swimming, running and bicycling - as one event. Competitors in the senior division, for ages 11-14, swim 200 meters, then bike six miles, then run 1.2 miles to the finish line. Distances for the junior division are half those lengths.
Except for the bike and helmet, triathletes don't have to spend a lot of money on equipment. What they do spend is time training.
Russ, Cole and Grant Throckmorton of Wytheville have been competing in Ironkids' Bread and other triathlons for four years. They also swim for the Southwest Aquatic Team and play several other sports.
Their mom won't let them play football or they'd probably do that, too.
The boys' rooms are stuffed with medals and trophies; they have scrapbooks full of awards and certificates, newspaper articles from their local paper and souvenirs from the many triathlons and swim meets they've competed in up and down the East Coast, from Georgia to New York.
``It's probably 50 percent natural, 50 percent work,'' said Russ, 14.
In all their training, the boys must have swum as many miles in the pool as their mom and dad have put on their van, taking them to swim meets, soccer, baseball and basketball games and triathlons.
Well, maybe they've put that many miles on their bikes, too.
And who knows how many miles they've run.
On most days, you'll find the boys at Radford University's Dedmon Center - swimming lap after lap in the pool, usually for two hours at a time, then running round and round the track, lifting again and again in the weight room or riding bikes for miles on the roads. Some days, they swim before school; during the summer, they swim twice a day.
The brothers say they do all this training because they want to, not because a coach or a parent is pushing them. Sometimes, practice gets tiresome, just as it would if they were studying a musical instrument. But, they know it's the only way to get better, stronger, faster.
All their time and effort has paid off.
Cole, 13, was national Ironkids triathlon champion when he was 10 and 11, and he was third in the nation at 12. He has placed in the top 10 in several events in YMCA swim meets and made the state Junior Olympics in swimming.
Russ placed seventh in the national Ironkids' triathlon in the 13-year-old age group and qualified to attend a camp in New Mexico this summer for Junior Olympic triathletes. Only 32 kids were chosen from across the country.
Grant, 11, is the owner of 10 medals in triathlons, placing in the top three each time. He placed 11th in the Ironkids national competition, and has won ``more swim medals than you can count,'' his mom said.
All the boys have long red tapes that say ``FINISHER'' in big white letters that they earn when they've crossed the finish line at Ironkids' triathlons. In fact, every kid who makes it across the finish line takes home a tape which says, ``Every finisher is a winner.''
Although Russ will be too old to compete in the Ironkids triathlon, Cole and Grant are planning to enter the event in Nashville, Tenn., and Atlanta this summer. For the past several years, Ironkids competition has been held in Roanoke, but there will be no competition here this year.
The boys also are successful in the classroom, where Grant and Cole are honor roll students. This year, Russ barely missed it; high school is tougher. The boys' parents have taught them that a good education is even more important that being a good athlete.
``My parents say that if you don't have good grades, you're not going to get anywhere by playing sports,'' Grant said.
``If you're playing sports and you get injured,'' Russ said, ``you'll be able to do something else if you've been to college.''
Russ' dreams include both sports and education. ``I'd like to go to college, win the national Ironman championship, win Olympic medals in swimming and running and become a doctor or a dentist [like his dad].''
``Same thing,'' Cole said.
Grant, like most 11-year-olds, lives in a world of dreams. Though he works hard in school and in training for triathlons, being grown up is a long distance away.
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM/Staff. The Throckmorton brothers: (from left)by CNBCole, 13, Grant, 11, and Russ, 14, travel from Wytheville to Radford
almost every day for swim practice at the Dedmon Center pool. After
swimming, the boys train on land. color.