DUBAI // You wouldn’t have seen him among the first finishers, but it’s unlikely last year’s Dubai Triathlon meant more to anyone than it did to Nick Watson. Or his son Rio, 12.
Mr Watson, 45, is again preparing for the gruelling 1.9-kilometre swim, 90km cycle and 21km run. His son, diagnosed with a rare disease, will be with him at every step thanks to a special kayak, bike seat and a push chair.
Under the banner of Team Angel Wolf, Mr Watson and his son have entered several races over the past 12 months. It all started last summer, when Mr Watson had a health scare himself and decided to enter an Iron Man, but his work got in the way.
“It allowed me to stand back and think Rio will never ever get the opportunity to do something like a sport that I’ve been doing since the age of 16, the triathlon,” he said. “And I was training and getting fit, and I thought why don’t I try to do the race with him?”
By August he had signed up for the Dubai Triathlon, but didn’t have the funds to buy the equipment. So he appealed to the Dubai fitness community.
“We had a fantastic response,” Mr Watson said. “Within 48 hours, the chief executive of Adventure HQ, Sam Wisdom, called me in and said he’d always been inspired as a child by the first guy to do triathlons with his son, Dick Hoyt.”
Mr Hoyt famously competed with his son Ricky at the famous Hawaii Iron Man. “So I did research into what Dick Hoyt had done. It was like, I’ve got a do this race.”
Once the equipment was secured, all attention turned to making sure Rio would be comfortable. “Going into the first race we never knew if Rio would be able to sit on a kayak for under an hour, or go out on a bike for three plus hours.
“We had Sam from Adventure HQ help us. He followed me on a paddle board and cycled with me as well. If Rio wanted to stop we would have stopped. But he was big smiles to the end.
“It was just the most uplifting experience of my life.”
It was a long way from the early days after Rio’s diagnosis with 1Q44 deletion, an affliction that affects his motor and communication skills. “Back then, awareness for children with special needs was not really there,” he said.
Mr Watson, who was running a health club, started a programme called Reaching You, where children with special needs were invited to the gym to get them out of therapy environment. “We did numerous things,” he said. “We did a huge park event that we now do every year called Reaching You Party in The park.”
“We always thought that if there was a possibility that one child walking away from this event saw another in a wheelchair and asked their mother about it, then we would have started something very special.
“A huge change is happening and it’s great to see. Now we go out, I’m not recognised but my son is. People come up and say ‘your son’s Rio from the triathlon’, which is fantastic.”
akhaled@thenational.ae
