PORT ANGELES – Neil Jervis doesn’t act like a man with cancer.
That’s one reason D Bellamente asked the 57-year-old Port Angeles man to carry the torch for the opening of the Port Angeles Senior Games on Sept. 14.
“To complete an ironman competition when you have health issues – I don’t think there’s a better role model for the games,” Bellamente said on Wednesday.
“What a guy to embody that spirit of keeping it going no matter what the circumstances.”
Jervis, whose incurable but treatable cancer was diagnosed in January 2006, said he beat his personal record in the Subaru Ironman Canada triathlon competition in Penticton, British Columbia on Aug. 26.
He completed the Canadian competition’s 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run in 39 minutes 16 seconds.
He’s now training for a race in Phoenix – “just a marathon,” he shrugs.
And he told Bellamente that the run with the Senior Games torch from City Pier to the Port Angeles Senior Center at Seventh and Peabody streets will take him “seven or eight minutes,” she said.
