The United States will send three Olympians to compete in the Men’s Triathlon in Rio De Janeiro, and two of them live and train in Poway.
Something in the water, you ask?
Perhaps, just don’t drink it, because the two Olympians swim daily in the same pool as hundreds of local kids at the Poway Community Pool.
“It seems like we're a juxtaposition here," said Greg Billington. "We're training for the Olympics, and it's kind of a regular pool."
While some athletes train in secured facilities off-limits to the public, 27-year-old Billington and 30-year-old Joe Maloy quietly go about their business in the middle of suburbia.
They are surrounded by teenagers jumping off the high dive on one end and toddlers learning to swim on the other.
“We found Poway as kind of the perfect little hidden gem," said Maloy. "We've got a great pool here, we’ve got good access to the ocean for open water training, the roads are great, and there are trails everywhere for running."
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Both men moved to the small town several years ago to train under coach Paulo Sousa and his “Triathlon Squad”.
Maloy and Billington, who will compete against each other in Rio, train together using the same formula: work your body to the point of exhaustion and then wake up and do it again.
"All those workouts make you really tired and they make your brain work really slow sometimes and they make you really grumpy sometimes," said Maloy.
A typical day includes a three-mile swim, an eight to 10 mile run, and a two hour bike ride, with lots of physical therapy along the way.
“There's like nothing else we do, and I think that's really hard for a lot of people to grasp, we don't have another job, we don't have any real hobbies, all we do is train hard and try to become the best athletes we can be," said Billington.
The Rio 2016 Olympics air on NBC starting August 5, 2016.
