Wake Forest Athletics
Demon Deacon Makes Waves as International Triathlete
9/8/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country
Sept. 8, 2010
By Calais Zagarow, WakeForestSports.com
When the average boy is 10 years old, he spends most of his time watching television, playing video games or throwing a ball around in the yard with his friends. When Greg Billington was 10 years old, he ran his first triathlon.
Billington had been a competitive swimmer for two years when he decided to try the elementary-level race, which was made up of a 200-yard swim, two-mile bike ride, and 400-meter run.
"It was quite fun," says Billington. "I don't remember how well I did, but I remember beating one of my swimming competitors, one of the guys who was on my same swim team. I was pretty stoked about that."
Fast-forward a decade, and Billington is fresh off a fifth-place finish at the FISU 10th Annual World University Triathlon Championships in Valencia, Spain, the most competitive university-level competition of the triathlon season.
Billington embarked on his journey toward triathlon at the age of eight when he began swimming competitively in the town where he was raised, Six Mile Bottom, England.
He continued to swim competitively until the beginning of his high school career when he decided that he wanted to challenge his older brother's talents in competitive running. Billington still swam recreationally multiple times per week but focused mostly on cross country and track until he realized that he was not improving enough in either sport to stand out in the international arena.
"I was 16 when I started thinking seriously about doing triathlons," says Billington. "I was at that point when I was realizing that I wouldn't be good enough in either swimming or running to compete in the Olympics. So, I thought I'd try to combine them in triathlon and see if I could shoot for 2012 and 2016."
Eight varsity letters at Lakenheath High School in the UK and several fantastic performances at multiple international triathlons later, Billington decided to return to the United States, where he was born, and run cross-country for Wake Forest University.
"Training with the other athletes at Wake Forest has helped me learn more about running and more about ways I can improve myself," says Billington about his experience as a Demon Deacon. "Being with the other great athletes here is a great time and the coaching staff definitely help me learn about proper training methods."
Throughout his time as a runner for Wake Forest, Billington has consistently finished at the top of his team in the races he has run. However, because of the amount of training involved with both cross country and triathlon, Billington has sustained many injuries that have forced him to sit out most of the past few cross country seasons.
"I started out with one major injury, then got a stress fracture followed by thigh splints last year," says Billington. "I didn't even know it was possible to get thigh splints. I couldn't run or bike really, but I could swim, so I was able to get my swimming back up."
Not only did these injuries keep him from the cross country trails, they forced him to sit out most of the triathlon season, leaving him slightly unprepared for the World University Championships in Valencia in late August.
"I wasn't in great shape because I had missed a lot of the previous few months of training," says Billington, "but somehow I managed to pull out a great race."
The triathlon, where he finished fifth out of 75 competitors, consisted of a two-lap 1500-meter open-water swim in the Mediterranean Sea followed by a 40-kilometer bike and ten-kilometer run. According to Billington, the terrain was ideal with a flatter course for the leg he struggles with the most, the cycling.
"It's taken me a while to pick up the biking part of the triathlon," says the Wake Forest senior. "In my first World Championship when I was a junior in high school, I got dropped by dozens of people on the bicycle and that was a rather scarring memory. Over time that has really motivated me to not give up on my cycling."
Since his triumphant return from Spain, Billington has been mostly focused on training for the Grand Final competition of the Dextro Energy Triathlon ITU World Championship Series in Budapest, Hungary, which is on Sept. 11.
This particular triathlon is the final race of a series that was developed in May 2009 by the International Triathlon Union. The sole purpose of the series is to bring the absolute best athletes from around the world together to compete and raise the bar of competition leading up to the 2012 Olympics in London.
As a double major in Economics and Health and Exercise Science at one of the top 25 universities in the U.S., Billington knows that one of the biggest challenges he will face in Budapest is competing against athletes who have not had to balance coursework with their training over the years.
"The hardest part is that there will be a ton of great guys at the World Championship that definitely aren't in University at the moment and have already turned pro in triathlon already," says Billington. "So to get out there with them in the swim and hang with them on the bike will definitely be tough."
Yet, given how well he performed at the World University Championship in Valencia despite his many injuries and lack of training, Billington has a very positive outlook on how he will perform in Budapest.
"I like starting out most races in the mindset that I can do well and win," says Billington. "This World Championship in Budapest is my last triathlon of the season and I am planning to go out with a bang."
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