Helping athletes win medals
SF-based Olympian triathlete Ryan Bolton joins the U.S. team’s training staff
The Santa Fe man who trained Caroline Rotich when she won the Boston Marathon in 2015 will now have a hand in training potential Olympic athletes for USA Triathlon, the national governing body for the triathlon and associated events.
Ryan Bolton, himself a 2000 U.S. Olympian in the triathlon, will be the high performance technical advisor for USA Triathlon beginning next week.
“It is pretty cool,” Bolton said. “I’m pretty excited to be involved and right back in the middle of the whole Olympics process, which is pretty neat.”
In the newly created position, Bolton reports to John Farra, USA Triathlon’s high performance general manager. He is responsible for overseeing the execution of specific strategies within the high-performance plan related to elite athlete performance, and for ensuring the organization has a system to support athletes who can win medals in Olympic competition.
Bolton will serve as a primary advisor on USA Triathlon National Team roster criteria, athlete investment strategies and selection procedures for International Triathlon Union individual and mixed relay events.
“Our entire High Performance team is proud to bring on another U.S. Olympian and experienced coach to support USA Triathlon National Team athletes in their quest for podium performances in elite ITU competition,” Farra said in a release from USA Triathlon.
“With Ryan’s experience in sports physiology, nutrition and elite endurance sports, he will be an instant asset to our High Performance department.”
Bolton grew up in Gillette, Wyo., which has some of the finest and swimming facilities in the country.
He started swimming when he was five years old, primarily because his old sister was swimming.
“I was a super high-energy kid,” Bolton said with a chuckle. “My older sister was a swimmer and, when I was 5, I was at swimming practice and getting into trouble on the deck, so my mother said, ‘Throw him in the water. Maybe we can outlet some of his energy that way.’ ”
Bolton took to it right away and also became a runner.
“The same thing with running, I did well,” he said. “As a kid, when do you well at something and you get positive reinforcement, it just leads from there.”
There would be the University of Wyoming, where he ran cross-country and distance track, earning All-American and Academic All-American status.
“By my senior year, I was one of the top runners in the country, certainly one of the top Americans,” Bolton said.
But early in his collegiate career, he also discovered triathlons and quickly had success in the multi-sport discipline that includes running, swimming and cycling various distances.
After graduating, Bolton took to the professional International Triathlon Union, from 1997-2000, culminating in his Olympics appearance, where he finished 25th after a crash in the cycling portion.
“I only crashed twice in my triathlon career and one of them was in the Olympics,” he said.
In 2002, Bolton won the Ironman Triathlon covering a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bicycle ride and a marathon 26.22-mile run in Lake Placid, N.Y.
However, the wear and the desire to move on to something different led him back to school in 2004, where he earned a master’s degree in human nutrition, with an emphasis on stress metabolism. Combined with his bachelor’s in exercise physiology and long-term background in endurance sports, Bolton was ready to begin coaching.
Having enjoyed training in Santa Fe during his competitive years, he said he felt it was the best place to set up shop as Bolton Endurance Sports Training. And shortly thereafter, he established the Harambee Project to train a group of elite distance runners.
In his new position with USA Triathlon, much of his work will be virtual from Santa Fe, which is how he already does much of his training for those who live outside New Mexico.
“It’s technology,” Bolton said. “It’s so easy now. All of their programs are online. I have a software platform with an online program with specific workouts. They can log their workouts into it. They can log in, work out and they can communicate with me via cellphone or Skype, all that stuff.”
Still, he knows this new gig will add to an already loaded calendar and keep him hopping around the world.
“I’ll be at the Olympics in 2020 and I’ll be doing a lot of traveling,” Bolton said. “But my primary role will be helping from a technical coaching standpoint, helping athletes and their coaches and their groups become more efficient and follow the right programs, making it so that we have better training, and a better chance on the technical and coaching side of things to win medals.”