Triathlete has 'nothing to lose'

He has been charged by a territorial llama, bitten by a dog and hit by a car, all in the service of his chosen sport. None of those adversaries, however, could measure up to the one Victor Plata has wrestled for the past year.

The Minneapolis native has been subduing 17-hour course loads and staring down massive texts as a full-time student at University of the Pacific's McGeorge School of Law. The 2004 Olympian fully intended to retire and get on with life after the Athens Games. At 35, though, Plata found he had enough 1.5-kilometer swims, 40K bike races and 10K runs left in his legs to set his sights on the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The triathlete who brings fresh meaning to the words "Olympic trials" will be competing in his third one Saturday in Tuscaloosa, Ala. During last year's killer schedule, Plata limited conversations to five minutes, ate his precooked meals in class and ran his breakfast cereal through a blender because drinking it rather than chewing it saved five precious minutes for training. That kept him on pace to qualify for the trials and graduate from law school on May 10, guaranteeing him a milestone year.

"I called last year my 'Miracle Tour,' because it was going to take a miracle for me to make the trials," said Plata, who grew up in Minneapolis' Marcy-Holmes neighborhood and attended South High School before his family moved to California. "I didn't really believe I could do it, because the way it was set up, if one thing went wrong, that was it.

"I'm confident I'll race well [in the trials]. But no matter where I finish, three weeks later, I'll have my law degree. I have nothing to lose."

After becoming an alternate for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Plata finished 27th in the 2004 Games and ended the 2005 season with a No. 12 world ranking, his highest ever. Once he began law school, he was not about to compromise his study time. With few hours left over for training, Plata slipped down the triathlon ranks and prepared to retire as a professional athlete.

As he wound toward the end of the 2006 season, he wasn't eager to compete, but his contract with USA Triathlon's national team required him to complete one more race that year. Though Plata finished the season ranked 96th, he finished 17th in that race in Cancun and was the second American across the line.

"A teammate asked me to withdraw from the Cancun race so he could get in and get points," Plata said. "I wanted to, but [national team officials] wouldn't let me. I started training and I hated it, but for two weeks, I trained like a madman while I studied. And after that race, a lightbulb went on in my head. I could make the trials. I could make the Olympics."

Thus was born the 2007 Miracle Tour. Plata figured he needed to win three races to get into a World Cup event and earn a place in the Olympic trials. As much as he hoped to make another Olympic team, Plata said, he didn't want to postpone his next career by cutting back on his course load.

He woke at 5 a.m. every day and got in a swim or a run before his first class. The five minutes saved by drinking his cereal allowed him to complete one more mile on his run. He studied during breaks between classes, trained all day long on the weekends and slept most of Fridays, when school ended early.

"It was traumatic," said Plata, who in a serious training week will complete 250 miles on the bike, 20 in the water and 70 on foot. "There were a few times I thought, 'I can't do this anymore.' But I knew it would pass."

Plata won the Musselman Triathlon and was second in the Drummondville Pan American Cup, which barely got him into a World Cup race last October in Rhodes, Greece. A 13th-place finish qualified him for the Olympic trials.

Saturday's male and female winners will automatically earn Olympic berths, joining Jarrod Shoemaker and Laura Bennett, who made the Olympic team by winning USA Triathlon's first selection event last fall in Beijing. The final two members of the team will be chosen after the Hy-Vee Triathlon in Des Moines in June.

Should Plata make it, he will meet up in China with his mother, Caitlin Addison-Howard, who has been teaching and traveling there for the past eight months. Then it's on to the next obstacle: the bar exam.

"I can't take it in July, because I'll probably be racing" in the Hy-Vee event, said Plata, who expects to take the test next February. "In the trials, I'll be a law student going against guys like Hunter Kemper and Andy Potts. But I've put the work in. We'll see where it takes me."

Rachel Blount • rblount@startribune.com