The day that Paul Martin left the hospital in December of 1992, he found himself in front of the mirror, singing and dancing to a song on the radio. Just days earlier, he had lost his left leg in a car accident.
His attitude, then and there, provided a small window into the way the decorated para athlete would live his life. His disability didn’t hinder him. If anything, it let him fly. This week, the 58-year-old Lafayette resident will be inducted into the USA Triathlon Hall of Fame after winning the Olympic-Distance National Championship six times.
In 2005, he set the Ironman world record for leg amputees at 10 hours, 9 minutes and 17 seconds, and still holds the American world record in that category. The Ironman triathlons were first introduced in 1978.
“I was in fifth grade, and I remember hearing about it,” Martin recalled. “It was on ABC Wide World of Sports, like these guys doing everything — to put it in numbers, swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, run a marathon, 26.2 miles. It seemed like the most superhuman thing anyone could ever do, right? And then I lost my leg, and then I did 10 of them.
“Once I got a decent leg, I wanted to see if I could do a triathlon. I passed one of my hometown buddies on the bike. I was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t even know I was any good at this.’ The run was painful and difficult, but I got through it. I was kind of hooked. I did another one, another one, another one.”
He said he started crying when he got the call that he would be inducted into the Hall of Fame on his third or fourth try. The elite club, which began in 2009, houses just 59 inductees, not including the 2025 class. For perspective, the Ironman World Championships held in Kona, Hawai’i every year feature 2,400 athletes.
Bob Babbitt, who belongs to the USA Triathlon Hall of Fame and the Ironman Triathlon Hall of Fame, met Martin through the Challenged Athletes Foundation that he co-founded. He said that Martin is one of just three disabled athletes to join the Hall of Fame.
“One of my favorite stories from Paul that probably exemplifies what this means is he was racing Kona one year, and he was passing two German athletes during a run,” Babbitt explained. “He’s got a prosthetic leg, and he’s passing two guys, and he could hear as he went by, one saying to the other, ‘Challenged athlete, my (butt).’ To me, that sort of exemplifies what itap all about. You want to change perceptions. You don’t want people to look at you as lesser-than. Itap like, ‘Hey, that guy, he’s got a prosthetic leg, and he’s going faster than me.’ There’s no limits to what somebody can achieve, and nobody represented that better than Paul.”
Martin didn’t just limit himself to triathlons. He medaled in the International Triathlon Union World Championships multiple times (gold and silver), then later added hardware in the Disabled Cycling World Championships (bronze) in 1998.
He participated in the 2000 and 2004 Paralympics in various cycling events, won the Disabled Cycling Time Trial World Championships in 2002, and competed with the US Disabled Alpine Ski Team and the US Amputee Hockey Team.
All of it, put together, made him nearly impossible to pass up for USA Triathlon.
“Paul was one of those guys that didn’t care if he was a para triathlete or not,” said Tim Yount, the chief sport development officer at USA Triathlon. “He wanted to go against the able-bodied athlete head-to-head and he could do it. He did it often. He didn’t need to be in a prepared category. I think thatap what made him stand out, is his times were unreal and they were unreal for the era that he was racing, but they’re also unreal for what he was able to do against able-bodied athletes.
“When he goes as fast as he went in Ironman, when he goes as fast as he went at a world championship, it was like, how does this guy do this? The other thing that made Paul appealing, I think, is his charisma. He’s very charismatic, great personality. I think people like him and people loved what he was able to do. The combination of who he is as a person, who he was on the field of play, really made it — I wouldn’t say slam-dunk, but made it pretty easy for people to differentiate him from many others that are on the nominations ballot.”
Martin will attend the induction ceremony with his family on Thursday, and then will compete in the para triathlon nationals on Sunday. He met his wife, Sharon Wetherall, toward the tail end of his athletic career. She believes that he encapsulates everything that a USA Triathlete should stand for.
“If there is one person that embodies perseverance, grit and determination, it is my husband Paul Martin,” Wetherall said. “We all know he is a talented athlete, but few see the determination, the intensity and the commitment that happens when no one is watching. Over the 22 years that I have known him, Paul has poured his heart, soul and sweat into triathlon. He has been a force in the field of athletes both able-bodied and disabled, never taking no for an answer, going where others have yet to go, and taking the sport of triathlon along with him.”