Stoodio 32 - The Athlete #5

Interviewing Ian McKissik was quite the easy task. I have known him for five years. There was no need to wade through bullshit superficiality, no need to ask dead-end questions, no need to pry into his personal life. I was lucky; I already knew all the gritty details, and was familiar with his glimmering laugh, and his honest smile. Hell, I knew him way before he was signed on the hotshot pro team, BMC Professional Cycling. I knew him when he was a complete shit-show who crashed out of a race into a ditch with one foot duct-taped to his pedal because he had broken his cleat during warm-up. Yup.

Watching Ian’s rise to fame has been a very interesting to witness. I remember when I first met him. It was about five years ago on a wet winter day. A few other local racers and I had met to do hill sprint repeats on a steep mossy hill a few blocks away from the Puget Sound. Ian rolled up and was introduced as the “new guy to watch.” At the time I was also the new guy to watch, so my ego had something to prove as we raced up those hills, our lungs burning, our legs leaking lactic acid.

Ian possesses a very rare and fascinating drive, a single and narrow focus to achieve his dream, and this is what is necessary to race at the highest level in the world.

Yet, somehow his quick rise to fame never went to his head. Ian is the single most humble person I know. I feel as if many people do not really know who Ian is. He is quiet, a bit of a recluse, and thus is very much of an enigma. Even I don’t claim to know Ian well.

What I do know is that in every interaction I have had with him, he is always going out of his way to help me out. Whether it was the time that he sold me a Dura-ace Shifter for 50 bucks (they go for about 300) or the time he let me borrow his new and expensive car so I could make it to a race up in Canada that no one was carpooling too, Ian has always gone out of his way to look out for me. He never had any reason to do this. He purely did it because he is a genuinely compassionate human who cares about the pursuits of his friends.

From what I know of his past, Ian was always the quiet athletic guy. I have heard stories about Ian’s day as a cross-country runner in high school and college. He would show up to the start line with his massive barrel chest―he is big for a cross-country runner with his broad shoulders and dense muscles―and before the start of the race he would kneel in front of all the other runners, stick his finger down his throat, and force himself to vomit as a tactically planned psychological mind-fuck for all the other competitors. And, of course it worked, because he would always win.

The rest of his history is a little blurry to me. A couple attempts at school, a few jobs here and there―one of them being a truck-driver―and Ian was still searching. He wasn’t quite sure what his place in life was. After landing a great engineering job and a scholarship to an engineering school Ian had some direction, but still felt unsettled. He wanted to do something in life that he could call his own. He wanted to achieve something that he had done entirely by him self. He discovered cycling, and poured his phenomenal amount of drive and passion into it.

And that was it. After his second year of racing Ian landed a pro contract on one of the world’s most prominent cycling teams.

True fame comes from those who pursue their passions to their fullest potential. Ian McKissick does this.

So often people idealize those who are famous. Spectators see famous people and forget that these stars are still just humans. Think of Madonna, or Lance Armstrong. When people think of these famous individuals, they are thinking of the image of them, not of them as a human being. They forget that Lance still cries, and Madonna still flushes the toilet just like the rest of us.

Well, rest assured; Ian McKissick is going to be in the headlines of the pro-cycling world. People will see him on TV, in advertisements, in magazines, and they will think, “Wow, what an amazing athlete Ian is.”

Well, I will see him in all those magazines and advertisements, and when I see his big ol’ smile and gleaming eyes, I will think to myself, “Wow, Ian, what an amazing human you are.”