I feel like school, while very difficult, lends itself decently well to training. It’s like being an NCAA athlete. You structure your time because you have to but your class/study hours are less than if you had to be stationary 8 hours/day. You go to school from September-April and get prime triathlon months off. He goes to Ohio State so presumably has great access to their facilities. Idk if he has any sort of arrangement with them for treatment or anything like that but he at least has a college pool to train in and can hop on a nice track.
I agree that if the choice was only training versus training & studying then it might do him well but triathlon at his level has a window. Maybe he’ll take a pause between med school + residency but at least he won’t have to go back at age 40 and do classes.