Hollis aiming for Youth Olympic Games

Published 8:12 pm Saturday, June 23, 2018

The ultimate goal for Coahulla Creek High School rising sophomore Lane Hollis is the Summer Olympics. Having a shot at qualifying for the Youth Olympic Games is a big step in that direction.

Hollis, who will leave the country for the first time, will represent his country on Team USA’s triathlon team at a Youth Olympic Games qualifier event in Salinas, Ecuador for the held on July 1. The team took the top eight ranked triathletes from around the country. With Hollis ranked No. 3, he was a lock to compete.

Hollis competes in the 16-19 age group.

The Youth Olympic Games are Oct. 6-18 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“To advance to the Games in October, we’ll need to place one of our athletes in the top seven at the Trials,” Team USA director Steve Kelley said in a press release. “This will undoubtedly take a team effort. I’m excited to have Lane on the team. He’ll gain valuable experience in international competition and have a unique opportunity to visit Ecuador as well.”

The triathlon event consists of three segments — four if you ask the participants.

It starts with a half-mile swim followed by a 12 1/2-mile bike race and a 3 1/2-mile run in succession. The events themselves are grueling on their own and take precision and poise. But the time in between each segment may hold just as much importance.

“There’s this part they call transition,” Hollis said. “They say it’s a fourth discipline in triathlon because you can make a lot of time in transition and you can lose a lot of time in transition. Most times when people think of triathlons they don’t think of that middle part.”

An iron deficiency and injury have set him back at times this year, but Hollis is looking to come out strong this week. Due to his setbacks, his best event has switched from running to biking.

There isn’t one event that he favors over another. Each race has it’s quirks. The trick to being successful is being able to link all three together.

“For me it’s about moods,” Hollis said. “You’ll have phases that you go through. You’ll have one phase where you’re all about swimming and you just want to swim and swim and the same with biking and running. It just takes a lot of focus. You have to be looking forward to the next thing. Like on the bike you have to increase your pedal speed to get your legs warm for the run. It’s hard. You have to know what you’re good at and where to use what.”

Hollis has been participating in the sport since he was 6 and has grown each year.

“Coaching’s not exactly rocket science if you’ve got something good to work with,” Hollis’ father and coach Mitchell Hollis said. “Lane has the work ethic that it takes to excel in a sport like this. It’s a lot of early mornings and late afternoons and he’s been doing it going on his 10th year. He’s got big dreams and big goals.”

It wasn’t until he was about 13 when he realized his potential. From then on, he got serious and began to shape his craft the best he could.

“In the 14-year-old age group at the nationals race I got ninth,” Lane Hollis said. “I really figured out that I could do good things with this sport. At that time I started getting serious with the sport and working harder at it. I focused on all the other little things that a normal triathlete wouldn’t think about.”

Once he started to get serious, he began focusing on his workouts and taking care of his body.

Hollis doesn’t stick to a typical 15 year old’s schedule. He is up before sunrise in the pool getting in laps before school. Three days a week he’s up at 4 a.m. and in the pool by 5 a.m. Three days a week he bikes and three days he runs with his “off day” being Wednesday and he sprinkles in strength training throughout the week. On an average week Hollis will cover 10-15,000 meters of swimming, 110-150 miles of biking and 20-30 miles of running.

Spending the majority of his time training or going to school, Hollis has become proficient in time management.

“It can be hard at times,” Hollis said. “One of the big things is that it teaches you things. During school I’ve got school 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., so I can’t just have school and triathlon and have that be my life. You just have to balance everything. Any free time you have, you just have to use it wisely.”

Hollis has other goals in sights as well. He narrowly missed out on the Junior Elite Worlds and hopes to qualify for it in the years to come. But for now he just hopes to qualify for the Youth Olympics held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“It’s a huge, huge honor,” Hollis said on reaching this stage. “I’ve worked toward this for a while now. Of course there’s bigger goals, but this is getting close to those. It’s amazing to get to go down there as part of Team USA.”