Dusan Hrasko

Born and grew up in small town of Levice in the southern part of Slovakia (former Czechoslovakia). As a kid Dusan was very active but did not do any sports seriously. He did a lot of recreational skiing, some swimming and cycling mainly for commuting, but did not run at all. He attended Slovak Technical University and got his masters degree in Electrical Engineering. In 1995, few years after collapse of communist regime he and his wife Cerina, moved to United States to work for a small consulting firm in Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City is the place where all his sport activities started. He became and avid windsurfer and mountain biker, while still skiing as often as possible in Colorado. While still in Oklahoma City, with a close friend, they started to think about doing an Ironman - not really knowing much about what it is and how much training does it require. At this time he was not able to run more than 3 miles, did swim very poorly and was still only mountain biking.

Around year 2000 he moved to Dallas and here his training finally took off. With help from Scott Eder, Dusan started to seriously swim, bike and run several times a week. Scott wrote his first training plan and suggested some races. In 2001 he finished his first half Ironman in Lubbock TX.
In 2003 he finished his first Ironman race - inaugural Ironman Cour d'Alene Idaho in time just under 12 hours and following year finished Ironman Wisconsin.
In 2004 his daughter Emma was born, and while this significantly influenced his training schedule, he was still able to finish several more Ironman races, Florida in 2005 and Lake Placid in 2006, several half Ironman's, marathons and few shorter distance running races.

During every off season, Dusan was still skiing in Colorado - his life long passion. In 2007, Dusan, an expert, skier did have unfortunate, life changing skiing accident. On a beautiful, sunny March day, after about an hour of good skiing, he lost control of his skis and crashed into a tree. This left him paralyzed (complete T8 spinal cord injury).

Today Dusan is training as a wheelchair athlete, already participating in running races in his yellow racing chair. He finished his first half marathon wheelchair race just 10 months after the injury and was back on the slopes of Colorado, learning how to sit-ski less than year after the injury. His dream is to get into a shape to be able to finish Buffalo spring half Ironman in Lubbock as a wheelchair racer, someday and maybe even qualify for Kona (if the competition is weak enough). You can see him almost every weekend riding his racing chair or hand cycle around White Rock Lake.