Sixth sense drives Van Dyk

PRETORIA -- Wheelchair marathoner Ernst Van Dyk expects to be challenged in races. In Paris one year, heavy rain forced the South African to try to Super Glue sandpaper to his gloves mid-race, but the gloves were too wet. In Cleveland, he battled severe winds. And in Grand Rapids, Mich., he missed a turn, losing precious time.

But when he tried last year to win a record fifth consecutive Boston Marathon in the wheelchair division, he faced trouble of a more serious kind. Only 5 miles from the start of the race in Hopkinton, Van Dyk, already well ahead of the pack, came zooming toward smoke billowing across the road. Firefighters were battling a house fire, just off the course. Van Dyk tried to hold his breath, but gulped in smoke.

''It was scary," he said late last month from his home in Paarl, about 25 miles northeast of Cape Town. ''I slowed down for a while because I was just coughing so much. That's the stuff you need to prepare for -- you need to prepare for something to go wrong."

Van Dyk, 33, recovered that day to win. Now he is aiming for Boston Marathon win No. 6 Monday, hoping for a repeat performance that won't require braving cold winds, fishing for sandpaper, or inhaling smoke from a house in flames.

Few will bet against the red-helmeted man wearing bib No. W1. In the last five years, he has won an estimated 90 percent of his marathons. He set a world marathon record for wheelchair competitors in Boston in 2004, the beneficiary of a tailwind that helped him post a time of 1 hour 18 minutes 27 seconds. And he is now in the second leg of a four-marathons-in-four-week odyssey; last week, he competed in Paris, and after Boston, he will fly to races in London and Seoul.

''Some of the wheelchair guys are only focusing on two races a year, so the numbers are dropping at most of the races," he said, explaining why he is competing in four marathons in a month. ''It's stopping the sport from growing. So I'm trying to get the message across that you can race more than three or four and still do well."

Or, you can do better than well. Last year, he raced three consecutive weekends and won all three. He finished first in his five marathons last year.

There are few examples in sport in which a competitor dominates the field as Van Dyk's record in Boston and beyond the last five years.

''It's an amazing feat that a single person can time and time again come back and win," said Dr. Liz Bressan, professor in sports science at Stellenbosch University in South Africa's Western Cape wine region, who has known Van Dyk since he was a teenager. ''It's almost a Lance Armstrong-type of destiny."

Armstrong won his seventh consecutive Tour de France last year. Bressan attributes Van Dyk's success to his knowledge of sports science, ''his incredible ability to focus, his incredible drive, and his heart, if I may say so."

She added, ''He's had to face a lot of disappointments, face a lot of assumptions from people that he wouldn't make it. People would prejudge him just by looking at him. The fact is that the road is a bit longer for the athlete who is disabled. He became very strong."

But among the world's elite group of athletes who dominate their sport, there may be none as anonymous as Van Dyk. It reflects upon the lack of attention to his sport.

In South Africa, a nation of 43 million people just 11 years removed from the end of the rule of apartheid, which separated races and discriminated against non-whites in every conceivable way, Van Dyk also goes largely unrecognized -- except on the hilly roads around his home in Paarl, where he trains, where drivers, pedestrians, and common laborers sitting in the beds of trucks often call out his name, or the name he has earned, ''Champion!"

When he was born in April 1973 with genetic deformities of his right arm and both legs, a doctor advised his parents to institutionalize their son. His parents refused and Van Dyk grew up on the family farm in the Ceres region of the Western Cape. Van Dyk was only told the doctor's advice when he was in his 20s.

''It's what they told every parent who had a disabled kid in those days," he said. ''If you look at our country's background, the way they treated race was the way they treated disabilities: If you were disabled, they were going to push you away."

Since he started competing professionally in the late 1990s, Van Dyk said he has been trying to change people's views in South Africa about the abilities of disabled people, particularly athletes.

''I work very hard," said the broad-shouldered Van Dyk, who stands 6 feet 3 inches in prosthetic legs. ''I train 12 to 16 hours a week, just as much as an able-bodied athlete would train. The level that I push myself to, my heart rate and speed in training, is a lot of times higher than able-bodied persons do. There's no difference between myself and an able-bodied athlete, it's the choice of implement. I chose a wheelchair. Another guy chose a pole vault, or a javelin, or a discus."

Urged by his mother and grandmother to get a college degree, Van Dyk became the first disabled person in the history of Stellenbosch University to earn a degree in sports science. He wanted to study engineering, but switched because he believed the only way to fulfill his dream of becoming a professional athlete was to learn enough in college to coach himself.

But even with such foresight, and even after winning the Boston Marathon twice, he was finding it extremely difficult to work and train at the same time. He had been supporting himself with his job as operations manager of Stellenbosch's gymnasium.

In 2003, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital Network in Boston decided to sponsor Van Dyk, allowing him to quit his job and train year-round in Paarl, where he lives with his wife, Suzanne, and their two Siberian husky dogs. Spaulding's annual stipend is about $22,000, which combined with Van Dyk's race earnings allows him to focus on training. Last year, he earned about $50,000 from race purses, including $15,000 for his victory in Boston.

For Van Dyk, the Spaulding connection is one of many special links to Boston. He counts numerous friends in the city and for the third year will get a dose of prerace celebrity: He will toss out the ceremonial first pitch at the Red Sox game Sunday.

''Before the first year that I did it, I went with my wife to our backyard. I gave her an oven mitt and I tossed the ball to her," he said, laughing. ''It's quite a distance to throw a ball when you're sitting. I didn't want to throw a dirt ball. And I didn't!"

His Boston racing performances also recently brought him international recognition. Earlier this month, he was named a finalist for the Laureus World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability.

But now there's a race on, and he is eager for it.

''They go all out for the wheelchair division in Boston. They give us equal treatment and make you feel like you're an elite athlete," he said. ''I'm in good form. If the wind is right, I have a shot at improving on 1:18. But I just want to win again."

He hopes to keep coming back to Boston, and there's no reason he won't. He is young for his sport, and Bressan, the Stellenbosch professor, believes he could dominate for many more years, longer than Armstrong himself. ''Other people are just going to have to deal with that one," she said.