Ryan Boyle \u201918 has had a pretty good 2014. In May he won a World Cup cycling gold in Italy. In July, he matched the feat at the national championships held in Madison, Wis., and beginning Aug. 28 in Greenville he\u2019ll attempt to make it a trifecta while representing Team USA at the 2014 World Championships.<\/p>\n
For most people, those are the accomplishments of a lifetime. For a person who wasn\u2019t supposed to live to see his 10th<\/sup> birthday, however, they\u2019re merely icing on the cake\u2014like just about everything else since that awful Connecticut fall day in 2003.<\/p>\n \u201cI was on a Big Wheel at a friend\u2019s birthday party. I slid down the driveway into the path of a speeding pickup truck,\u201d Boyle said matter-of-factly recently during an interview at Furman\u2019s Trone Student Center. \u201cIt hit me in the back of my head, and I had to undergo emergency brain surgery where they removed most of my cerebellum, which controls balance and many other of the body\u2019s functions. Once they did that, they really had no hope for me . . . I was 9, and I spent my 10th<\/sup> birthday in a coma. My birthday present was getting a feeding tube put into me.”<\/p>\n Boyle delivers the line with a wry smile. He\u2019s told the story many times during inspirational speeches around the country and doesn\u2019t pull any punches about the experience in his 2012 autobiography, \u201cWhen the Lights Go Out: A Boy Given a Second Chance.\u201d<\/a> But it\u2019s always a tough one to hear.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember eating breakfast that morning, but I don\u2019t remember the accident at all. And actually when my parents told me what happened to me I just laughed in disbelief. But I soon found out it wasn\u2019t a joke,\u201d he said. \u201cI could only move my right index finger, and I couldn\u2019t swallow or speak for probably the first three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n Boyle spent two months in a coma at the Yale-New Haven Children\u2019s Hospital<\/a>, and when he woke he was moved to the Blythedale Children\u2019s Hospital<\/a> in Valhalla, N.Y., where he had to learn to do virtually everything again. His brain damage had caused him to lose almost all motor control, and though he was a fourth-grader he no longer knew the alphabet or how to do basic arithmetic.<\/p>\n It took two years of excruciating rehab before he could walk on his own, but he slowly began readjust to regular life. By all accounts, that would have been considered a complete victory for him and his family, one so inspirational it was featured on CNN<\/a>. Boyle, however, realized it wasn\u2019t going to be enough.<\/p>\n \u201cI just remembered what my life was like before my accident and how much I wanted to get back to living life like before,\u201d he said. \u201cBefore my accident I was one of the most athletic kids in my elementary school. I did mountain bike racing, I was an avid runner, I played soccer, I did BMX racing\u2014it was just so much fun that I couldn\u2019t let go of it. So I kept on striving toward that.\u201d<\/p>\n One of Boyle\u2019s rehabilitation stints led him to the Beyond Therapy Program<\/a> at the Shepherd Center<\/a> in Atlanta. He liked it so much he convinced his parents to move south, where he eventually enrolled in Berry College before transferring to Furman in the spring of 2014 for better training opportunities.<\/p>\n Boyle had decided he was going to become an elite competitive paracyclist, and his Team Roger C. Peace Para-Cycling squad<\/a> was based in Greenville, as was the Greenville Health System\u2019s Acceleration Sports Institute<\/a>. It was the right decision.<\/p>\n Boyle was invited to join the U.S. National Team in January and hasn\u2019t looked back\u2014unless it was to see how far ahead he was. In Italy, he captured first place in his division\u2019s time trial, upsetting the 2012 London gold medalist in the process, and in Wisconsin he was first in both the time trial and the road race. It was the second year in a row he won the MT2 road race national championship.<\/p>\n He\u2019ll be trying for a sweep of both races again on courses south of I-85 off Laurens Road<\/a> as one of 45 U.S. athletes. MT2 means men\u2019s division, tricycle (because of his balance problems, Boyle\u2019s bike has two rear wheels), degree of impairment. There are five degrees, and the lower the number, the greater degree of impairment.<\/p>\n Boyle\u2019s coach is Simon Bennett, and for nine months Boyle has been training twice a week with ASI\u2019s Keith Scruggs, who donates his time because Boyle is \u201ca personal project\u201d for Scuggs\u2019s Ph.D. work in motor control at the University of South Carolina. Scruggs came to Greenville from the U.S. Olympic training facility in Lake Placid, N.Y., so when he compliments Boyle\u2019s dedication, they aren\u2019t words to be taken lightly.<\/p>\n \u201cRyan is probably the hardest working athlete that I have ever had the pleasure of working with, and that says a lot,\u201d Scruggs said. \u201cHe\u2019s very determined, and I appreciate that. Sometimes I have to pull him back a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n Boyle still walks with a halting gait, but Scruggs says the balance and core exercises they do have made a big difference.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the nine months I\u2019ve been working with him he\u2019s actually gained 11 pounds, and nine-and-a-half of that was lean muscle mass. Usually you tell a cyclist, \u2018hey, we\u2019re going to gain 11 pounds,\u2019 and they run the other way. But he trusted me,\u201d Scruggs said. \u201cHe\u2019s gotten tremendously stronger, and he\u2019s able to control his body in ways he hasn\u2019t been able to do before, which transferred over to the bike.\u201d<\/p>\n One training moment in particular stands out. As the two walked past one of those huge truck tires Crossfitters sometimes flip as part of their workouts, Scruggs jokingly asked Ryan if he\u2019d ever done one before. He hadn\u2019t\u2014but that was about to change.<\/p>\n \u201cI could see it in his eyes, we were not going to take another step until he flipped that tire,\u201d Scruggs said. \u201cI got him in position, I was there behind him to spot him, I give him the same cues\u2014butt down, flat back, big chest, lift. As soon as he lifted the tire, he flipped it and just started beating his chest and roaring like a gorilla. It\u2019s the first time he\u2019s ever done something like that, and to see the joy and excitement in his face and his actions was priceless.\u201d<\/p>\n The world championships are the last race of the season, but Boyle\u2019s career is just beginning. His ultimate goal is to make the 2016 Paralypmics in Rio de Janeiro, and he plans to use his communication studies major to continue his motivational speaking.<\/p>\n Most of all, though, he just wants to keep enjoying a life he wasn\u2019t supposed to have.<\/p>\n \u201cA friend of mine who also rides, she was like \u2018we have already been through the hard part. All the pain, that\u2019s all behind us. What we\u2019re doing now is just fun,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not saying what I\u2019m doing now is easy for me, but it\u2019s not as bad as it could be.\u201d<\/p>\n More information on the world championships can be found at http:\/\/www.greenvillesc2014.com\/<\/a>. For more on Ryan\u2019s life, visit his Web site<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Furman student Ryan Boyle \u201918 has had a pretty good 2014. In May he won a World Cup cycling gold in Italy. In July, he matched the feat at the national championships held in Madison, Wis., and beginning Aug. 28 in Greenville he\u2019ll attempt to make it a trifecta while representing Team USA at the 2014 World Championships. For most people, those are the accomplishments of a lifetime. For a person who wasn\u2019t supposed to live to see his 10th birthday, however, they\u2019re merely icing on the cake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":13480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-communication-studies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}