Dick Hoyt, a man who became an icon of the Boston Marathon after pushing his wheelchair-bound son in the race for decades, has passed away at the age of 80. He died in his sleep Wednesday morning, Boston Marathon race director Dave McGillivray told local media. Hoyt famously ran the 26.2-mile race 32 times between 1980 and 2014, pushing his son Rick Hoyt the whole way in a custom racing chair. Rick Hoyt was born a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, but according to the Team Hoyt website, his father made it his mission to push his son across the finish line after the two did a 5-mile benefit run together in 1977 and the younger Hoyt confessed: “Dad, when I’m running, it feels like I’m not disabled.” In the ensuing decades, the pair finished more than 1,000 races and traveled across the country by bicycle. They completed their last Boston Marathon in 2014, after the 2013 race was derailed by the deadly bombings. A statue of the pair was unveiled in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, near the start of the race, in 2013.
