This is the story of Dick and Rick Hoyt, known around the world as "Team Hoyt." Rick was born in 1962 to Dick and Judy Hoyt in Holland, Massachusetts. Oxygen deprivation to his brain at birth left him diagnosed as a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy — his brain unable to send the right messages to his muscles. Doctors advised the Hoyts to institutionalize him, offering little hope that he'd recover or live anything resembling a normal life.
Dick and Judy held onto one thing: Rick's eyes followed them around the room, a sign he might someday find a way to communicate. They took him weekly to Children's Hospital in Boston, where a doctor encouraged them to treat him like any other child. Judy spent hours each day teaching him the alphabet with sandpaper letters and labeling every object in the house. Rick picked it up quickly — the beginning of his parents' decades-long push for his inclusion in community, sports, education, and eventually the workplace.
Dick and Judy fought to get Rick into public school, pushing administrators to look past his physical limitations. They took him sledding and swimming like any other child. Once they'd shown he could learn as well as anyone, they turned to the next challenge: giving him a way to communicate for himself.
In 1972, with $5,000 and help from engineers at Tufts University, they built Rick an interactive computer — a cursor that scanned across the alphabet, letter by letter, which he could select with a simple tap of his head against a piece attached to his wheelchair. The first time the computer came home, Rick surprised everyone. Instead of "Hi, Mom" or "Hi, Dad," his first words were "Go, Bruins!" — Boston was in the Stanley Cup Finals that season. From that moment, it was clear Rick loved sports and followed the game just like anyone else.
In 1975, at 13, Rick was finally admitted to public school. After graduating high school, he attended Boston University and earned a degree in Special Education in 1993. Dick retired from the Air National Guard in 1995 as a Lieutenant Colonel, after 37 years of service.
Team Hoyt began in the spring of 1977, when Rick asked his father if they could run together in a race benefiting a lacrosse player at his school who had become paralyzed — Rick wanted to show that life goes on regardless of disability. There was one problem: Dick was 36 and not a runner. But great fathers make sacrifices, giving their time and energy for a child's sake, sometimes just to see them smile. Dick agreed, and pushed his son's wheelchair the full five miles.
After that first race, Rick told his father, "Dad, when I'm running, it feels like I'm not handicapped." From then on, Dick ran every day — often pushing a bag of cement in the wheelchair when Rick was at school — and grew fit enough to post a personal best of 17 minutes in a 5K, even while pushing his son. Over the next three and a half decades, the two set, met, and surpassed their own goals and everyone else's expectations of what a father could do for his wheelchair-bound adult son.
In 1981, the Hoyts finished their first Boston Marathon, Dick pushing Rick's specialized wheelchair the full 26.2 miles through downtown Boston — a race Dick admits was hard on him. Four years later, on Father's Day, they took on something unprecedented: a triathlon combining a one-mile swim, 40-mile bike ride, and 20-mile run. The question for the Hoyts was never whether they could do it, but how. The answer was in the equipment: for the swim, Dick towed Rick in a specialized boat attached to a bungee cord around his waist; for the bike, they rode a custom two-seater; for the run, Dick pushed Rick's racing chair.
That triathlon lit a fire that has burned ever since — the message Rick had typed, about feeling like he "wasn't handicapped," launched an odyssey of love that has carried father and son to competitions around the world, and even taught Dick to swim. "He's the one who has motivated me, because if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be out there competing," Dick says. "What I'm doing is loaning Rick my arms and legs so he can be out there competing like everybody else."
By 1988, they'd taken on the most demanding event in the sport: the Ironman Triathlon in Kona, Hawaii — a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, and 26.2-mile marathon, which they would go on to race six times. Their first attempt fell short when Dick got sick, but they returned in 1989 and finished. In 2003, a bike crash sent them to the hospital for five hours — Rick needing stitches on his face, Dick nursing road rash — but they got back up, tried again, and finished. They returned to Hawaii several more times to race the Ironman.
Over the years, the Hoyts completed dozens of marathons, triathlons, and road races, but in 1992 they took on something entirely their own: a cross-country trek through 18 states, from the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles to the Marriott Long Wharf on Boston Harbor. The journey took 47 consecutive days and became a family affair they affectionately called "The Trek Across America."
Rick marvels at his father's strength. A typical triathlete weighs about 150 pounds with a 17-pound bike — 167 pounds total. Dick weighs about 180 pounds, and their tandem bike, built heavier and stronger to carry them both, weighs roughly 70 pounds. Add Rick's 100 pounds, and the total comes to 350 pounds — nearly 200 pounds more than the average triathlete and bike combined. The same math applies to the two-mile open-water swims Dick has to pull his son through.
In 2005, the Hoyts founded the Hoyt Foundation to help others with disabilities take part in athletic pursuits, promote everyday inclusion, and raise disability awareness. Its benefactors include Boston Children's Hospital, Easter Seals of Massachusetts, Rehab Resources, and various summer camps and therapeutic organizations. Their motto, "Yes You Can," carries a message shaped by decades of hearing the opposite.
Team Hoyt's full record includes 255 triathlons (6 at Ironman distance, 7 half-Ironmans, 22 duathlons), 72 marathons (32 of them Boston Marathons), 8 18.6-milers, 97 half-marathons, a 20K, 37 10-milers, 35 Falmouth 7.1-milers, 8 15Ks, 218 10Ks, 160 5-milers, 4 8Ks, 18 4-milers, 161 5Ks, 8 20-milers, 2 11Ks, a 7K, and a 20-mile bike ride for Best Buddies.
From the start, whatever the Hoyts did with their other sons, they did with Rick too. People stared at first, but eventually embraced them. Through every interview and book, one theme has held: there is no Team Hoyt without each other — and neither has ever finished last.
Dick has written about their journey in "It's Only a Mountain," chronicling their athletic achievements, and in "Devoted: A Father's Love for His Son," a more personal account of his path as Rick's father. In 2012, Rick published his own book, "One Letter at a Time," co-authored with the Hoyts' social media director Todd Civin — sharing Rick's own voice alongside the stories of dozens of people whose lives Team Hoyt has touched.
The Hoyts have received numerous honors for bringing disability issues into the national conversation, including induction into the Ironman Hall of Fame, the "Living Legends" award from the Sports Museum of New England, a Certificate of Achievement from the President's Council on Sports and Fitness, the Champion Sports Award from the Lombardi Foundation, the Parenting Award from the Army National Guard, the "Exemplary Father" award from the Office of the Mayor of Dayton, Ohio, and the Humanitarian Service Award from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
By 2013, decades of competition had taken a physical toll, and Dick, 73, and Rick, 52, decided to make that year's Boston Marathon — long their favorite race — their swan song. The bombing at the finish line cut the race short for far too many, Team Hoyt included; stopped at the 23-mile mark, they could not finish.
The story couldn't end there. Team Hoyt returned for the 2014 Boston Marathon as their true grand finale, ending, fittingly, the same way it began. "Well, we didn't finish [the 2013 Marathon]," Dick told WBUR in Boston. "But the big thing, our concern, was the people who got killed and wounded. And so that's why we're running this year, for the people who got killed and wounded."
A father-son team that began by racing for someone else's benefit, Team Hoyt carried that same spirit for 37 years, proving that stubborn persistence and dedication — and the particular, bottomless love between a father and son — can accomplish almost anything, if it's sought out and fully embraced.
Dick and Rick Hoyt have inspired a new generation of fathers, and their courage and dedication remain a lasting reminder of what it means to show up for your children. "We run for the people who think they can't run," Dick says. Learn more about Team Hoyt at www.teamhoyt.com. Team Hoyt is proud to work with John Hancock, which has contributed significant time, money, and support to help Dick and Rick continue racing across the country. Learn more at www.johnhancock.com.
Since this story was first told: Dick Hoyt died on March 17, 2021, at age 80, at home in Holland, Massachusetts. Rick Hoyt died on May 22, 2023, at age 61. Over four decades together they completed more than 1,100 races, including 32 Boston Marathons, with their final joint finish coming in 2014. The Boston Marathon now presents an annual Rick and Dick Hoyt Award, keeping their story part of the race they ran together so many times.