<p>The day before the race, Chris posted on social media, "Tomorrow I wake up and go from being a boy with Down syndrome to an Ironman." And that is exactly what he did. Chris was required by state race officials to be tethered to a guide during the running and swimming portions of the competition. Despite facing the adversity of falling off his bike and being attacked by ants at a nutrition stop as reported by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/09/health/first-person-with-down-syndrome-completes-ironman-scn-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>, he still crossed the finish line under the 17-hour cut off to make his time official. </p><p><br></p>
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<p><br></p><p>Shane Facteau, the Ironman Group's COO says that Nikic played an important role in keeping spirits up and moral high during a time when it has been difficult to hold large scale competitions such as the Ironman race. </p><p>As Facteau told the Panama City News Herald, "I can say on an individual level that he has had a huge impact on our team. It's been a rough year in a lot of ways. We had to move a lot of races, and I think he may not understand this but the positive impact he has had on individuals in our organization has been tremendous. It's so good to see the team be around him and feel the positive energy. He's pushing the boundaries of what's possible. He's putting himself out there, and that's something people need to understand," Facteau continued. "He's taking the opportunity, and there's always risk in that there's the chance of success or failure. We love to see people of all shapes and sizes do that."</p><p>In an interview with <a href="https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a34276109/chris-nikic-ironman-triathlon-down-syndrome/" target="_blank">Runners World</a> last month, it appears that Nikic sees the Ironman competition as a stepping stone to greater heights. "My dream is to buy my own house, buy my own car, [and] get a smoking hot blond wife from Minnesota."</p><p>In the words of the great John Mellencamp, "Ain't that America."</p>From Your Site Articles
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Before you click 'send' on anything else, read this comic. It's important.
Everyone seems to be clicking "send" a bit too early nowadays.
We officially live in a world where internet trigger-happy world leaders can send massive populations into a devolved tail spin with erratic tweets, posts, and subsequent responses. These posts can have far-reaching consequences, and in the haste to respond in kind we've forgotten that we've normalized this kind of attitude.
Boulet is a French comic artist who has been writing about this for 15 years.
Originally he started writing an autobiographical series, but when he realized how accessible it was to his readers, he decided to make it fictional. "So it's mostly 'drawn stand up comedy,'" he explains. "I'm the main character, but in the same way comedians are there own character when they are on stage. The purpose is not really to talk about me but about situations of everyday's life everyone can relate to."
In his words, "The comic (below) was an anecdote about a Facebook mistake, I had basically two choices: Use it as a Facebook status to make my friends laugh or try to dramatize the whole process into an internal crisis to make it a story."
Comic by Bouletcorp, where it originally appeared. Used here with permission.
‌‌‌‌‌‌‌That "internal crisis" is something Boulet is very interested in.
Boulet enjoys using the accessible medium of cartoons as a way to explore complex issues. He loves learning about and studying consciousness and neuroscience. His fans enjoy this.
"There were fun discussions in the comments about how the brain works ... the very idea that we have a parallel process that can interfere, overlap or get in conflict is actually a thing. What I found most intriguing about this story was to literally feel my hand freeze BEFORE I could put an explanation on the WHY it froze."
He also had a great suggestion as to figuring out the motivations behind certain posts. "We should always go on social networks with EEGs on. We would learn a lot."
After what we've seen on social media over the last few years, it's hard to disagree.