Disability won’t keep teen from triathlon
Born without arms, young athlete is training for Chicago event
For someone who says he has no aspirations of being a star athlete, Hillside teen Tim Bannon sure is trying a lot of sports.
Tim was born without arms and became a viral phenomenon thanks to a workout video that showed him overcoming the odds — and his fears — to jump onto a box.
Now the 14-year-old incoming freshman at Proviso West is set to participate in the Chicago Triathlon and plans to try out for the Panthers football team as a kicker.
“Ninety-three-pound, 14year-old, five-foot-seven kid, young man, is going to try out for kicker on the football team,” he said. “All my friends were laughing at me and were like, ‘You?’
“I’m not worried (about getting tackled). They said, ‘Occasionally, if (kickers) do get hit, that’s considered (a) foul.’ I don’t care if I get sacked. I want to be a kicker.”
Before football, though, Tim’s focus is running two kilometres, swimming 200 metres and biking seven kilometres in the Life Time Kids Tri Chicago race, during the Chicago Triathlon. His mother, Linda Bannon, who also was born armless because of Holt-Oram syndrome, will compete in the triathlon.
Tim started building strength through Du Quoin-based NubAbility, the disability program where he made the viral boxjump video, and since July he has been training for the triathlon with Dare2tri, a Chicagobased community group that helps people with physical and sight impairments participate in sports.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Dare2tri co-founder Keri Serota said of Tim’s sports pursuits. “It’s great when kids with disabilities and their efforts get recognized for that and are able to participate with able-bodied peers.”
Tim said he’s glad people have drawn inspiration from his video and his story, but frankly, and unapologetically, he’s not all that into athletics.
“I’m not an athletic guy,” he said. “I actually have never gone back to that (NubAbility) gym since that video ... I don’t want to be in athletics, but now that that video’s gone viral, I kind of have to,” he said and laughed. Sports can be as much a source of frustration as it is fun for Tim and his mother.
They both thought they would take to soccer, for example, but each had bad experiences.
Linda said when she was a kid, other players were very aggressive with her, and she wondered if some were trying to discourage her from playing.
Tim said soccer is “not my favourite sport to play outside. I’ll play it on like a video-game console or I’ll watch it on TV, but I’m not about to go out there, contact, about to get kicked in the shin ... about to get kicked in the ... I ain’t going to go there.” In November, Tim and his parents all began working with Dare2tri co-founders Dan Tun and Serota.
Serota said Tim was shy at first but came out of his shell as he built up his skills.
Tim is aware of the physical pitfalls of the triathlon, such as tripping. “Uh, tuck and roll. That’s my plan,” he said.
Tim uses a recumbent footpedal tricycle, which “he kind of steers with his core,” Serota said. While swimming, he achieves buoyancy similarly to how people use a “dead man’s float.”
“Kicking his legs, and then rotating his torso from his shoulders to his hips, he’s able to roll and essentially to side-breathe and ... and propel himself forward with his legs,” Serota said.
“People see Tim and Linda and our other athletes doing extraordinary feats like doing the triathlon ... and it’s not just, ‘Oh, this is a disabled person doing this,’ but it’s like, ‘Wow, if they’re doing this, what’s my excuse? Why am I not living a healthy active life as well?’ ”
For Tim, it’s a simpler goal: just to live normally, be one of the guys.