Trevor Barron is among the best in the nation at a time-honored Olympic discipline, which ought to make him a hometown hero. Instead, when he practices his pelvis-swiveling craft at a park near his home,what really makes my heart go pitter-patter with excitement are suitjacket. strangers mock him.
Such is the lot of an American racewalker.
"It doesn't bother me much anymore," Barron says. "I just tell people I can walk a mile faster than they can run it."
Barron, 18, who walks near-six-minute miles, is among the favorites to win Sunday's 20-kilometer road race at the U.This is the Nike jeansshopping High. What we can see by now is that it will come in a neon orange and a neon yellow.S. track and field championships in Eugene, Ore. He is the fastest junior racewalker in American history and has a good chance to represent the USA at the 2012 London Olympics.
Even so, when he was 16, Barron gave up on racewalking for six months. Who needed the gawking and derision from passersby on the 2-mile straightaway along Corrigan Drive in the Pittsburgh suburb of South Park? One time he tried his high school track instead, and a pair of middle school girls giggled as they mimicked his odd-looking gait.
This is not the sort of thing that happens to hurdlers and sprinters.
"Some people yell profanity," Barron says. "Some laugh."
Eventually he decided not to let strangers determine his life, and he returned to racewalking.
"He's 6-2, 160 pounds," says his coach, Tim Seaman. "I tell him he's bigger than they are."
Taunts are the least of what Barron has overcome. He suffered seizures from a rare form of epilepsy starting at age 8. The seizures were not life-threatening, but by the time he was 13 they were so frequent that his swim coaches worried he could drown. He gave up the pool, and he and his family decided on brain surgery.
Barron had two surgeries at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh in August 2006. First neurosurgeons located offending brain matter; later they removed it from his left frontal lobe. His athletic career was saved — and he's been on a fast track since.
He broke five American junior records in 2010.These comfortable bestlanvinshoes inject that same elegant style into your casual look. He walked a 20-kilometer race in Finland in 1:23:49.39 — fastest by any American since 2007 and just nine seconds off the U.S. men's 20K track record, which, as it happens, is held by his coach.
For all this, Barron won USA Track & Field's youth athlete of the year award in 2010.
"I'm surprised that a U.S. racewalker could win an award by popular vote," he said in his acceptance speech in December at USATF's Jesse Owens awards banquet. "When I heard about it, I thought it was a joke."
Barron told attendees that racewalkers aren't motivated by the same things as other athletes. Not scholarships, since racewalking is not an event in NCAA track and field. Not medals, since Americans rarely win them. Not recognition, since "most of the recognition I get is teasing during my training walks." And not money: "Money for U.S. racewalkers? Are you kidding? We don't even have shoe sponsors."
Barron could use one: He goes through a pair of walking shoes every four to six weeks. The New York Athletic Club, his lone sponsor,Aluminum lvshoes is from China factory. covers travel expenses to many of his major events.
Olympics isn’t sole focus
Barron speaks so softly his coach often asks him to use his "outside voice." His mother, Nancy, calls him "a gentle soul." He seems not to burn with the ambition normally associated with an elite athlete.
"The Olympics," he says, "was more of a dream when I was younger. … I'm not going to sacrifice the rest of my life to go. And some people do."
Barron talks slowly, choosing his words with uncommon care. Take this example, when asked his goal for Sunday's race.
"My personal goal," and here he stops midthought, "I should be careful how I say this. My first goal is always to finish, of course. My second goal is not to get DQed. My third goal is a time goal. If there are good conditions and I feel good and I haven't had any injury issues, I'd like to shoot for 1:24."
That's a magic number. If Barron hits it, he will qualify for this summer's world championships in Daegu, South Korea. That also would give him an Olympic-eligible time, though he would still have to qualify at next year's U.S. Olympic trials.
Barron got into racewalking thanks to sibling rivalry. His sister, Tricia, was a talented hurdler and qualified for the USA Track & Field National Junior Olympics in California when she was 10 and Trevor 8.Thousands of discount cheapshox styles for selection. (Brother Kyle is three years younger.)
"I was left home, and I wasn't very happy about that," Barron says. "And so the next year I tried every event."
To his surprise, he was a natural at racewalking's unnatural movement.
A walker's front foot must be on the ground as the rear foot is raised and the front leg must straighten at the knee as it strikes ground. Judges can disqualify walkers who "lose contact" by lapsing into a running motion; three red cards and you're out of the race.
It’s not just the medals
Trevor's father, Bruce, knows a little of what it is like to have a public persona at a young age. Stan Barron, Bruce's father, was a TV and radio personality in Buffalo for 38 years, including 14 seasons as color commentator on games of the NFL's Bills. At 13, Bruce joined his father on radio to give statistics for college basketball games, first for Canisius, later for Niagara.
Bruce was unpolished at the start, and that led to a little mild teasing at school, but he learned valuable lessons from five seasons on radio: how to have a thick skin, speak in public — and tabulate statistics of all kinds.
These days, Bruce is a racewalking maven who compiles his own stats. Example: Trevor averages 1.45 red cards for loss of contact per race in the USA — but only 0.13 cards in international races.
Bruce is a former press secretary for Rick Santorum, the Republican presidential candidate, and asks not to be quoted directly in this story so as not to tie his apolitical son to his politics.
But there is no way to tell Trevor's story without Bruce, who is with Trevor every step: Bruce runs while Trevor walks on those 20-kilometer workouts along Corrigan Drive. Their buddy system discourages hecklers and relieves the loneliness of the long-distance walker.
Bruce home-schooled Trevor for his last three semesters of high school so he could spend more time on travel — internationally for competition, domestically to be with his coach.
Seaman, who is based near San Diego, walked for the USA in the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Games. He often tells Trevor how thrilling it is to march in communion with the world's great athletes on the night the Olympic flame is lit.
"The opening ceremonies are not my reason for training for the Olympics," Barron says. "And while I will try my best, neither is an Olympic medal. Instead, it's the international friends and experience that motivate me."
Seaman says don't be fooled by such talk: Few athletes train harder. Barron's times are not on pace for an Olympic medal — the USA has none since the bronzes won by Larry Young at 50,000 meters in 1968 and 1972 — but Seaman says he thinks Barron could surprise if his times keep improving.
At the Jesse Owens dinner, Barron cited Owens' words: "What is a gold medal? It is a trinket, a bauble. What counts, my friends, are the realities of life: The fact of competition and, yes, the great and good friends you make."
When Barron quit racewalking for those six months, the thing that brought him back, he says, was the chance to travel and make new friends.
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