Cycling champion from Vancouver talks Olympic dreams, life with type 1 diabetes

VANCOUVER Wash. (KPTV) - It takes a lot to be an elite athlete, even more when living with type 1 diabetes. McKenna McKee is a 13-time sprint track cycling national champion from Vancouver who has gone global.

“I think I’ve been to nine countries now,” McKee said. “I’ve been to six of the seven continents.”

FOX 12 first met the now 21-year-old in late 2020 in a High School Spotlight. This past summer McKee nearly made the U.S. Olympic team.

“Being that close to qualifying to the Olympics and almost being an Olympian but not doing it, definitely if you see the times from racing and you’re 0.00 - and that’s like less than a tenth of a second you’re like, ‘Ahh! I’m right there!’

McKee’s racing season ended in September, but she just took an offseason run in Montreal and came home with a pair of silvers in her suitcase alongside her insulin for type-1 diabetes.

“It’s definitely become an outlet just to cope and everybody on a bike is an ordinary person, so it’s made me feel the closest to normal.”

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The Lower Columbia College nursing student has been a competitive rider since the age of 6 when she was diagnosed.

“You can feel one way and then your blood sugars are completely different or it’s like, ‘Oh, my gosh! I’m so anxious’ but my blood sugars are fine and then I am really high. Intake of water, how am I doing? Am I dehydrated? Am I over-hydrated? Now I got to go to the bathroom and when my blood sugars are really high, I have to go to the bathroom quite frequently so that always makes it hard. You’re wearing a full skin suit, so you got to zip everything off and put it back on and you have like 5 minutes to get to the start line, so you are definitely juggling with a lot.”

McKee has been juggling where to practice too ever since the Velodrome closed down at Alpenrose Dairy. Now, Redmond, Washington or Burnaby, BC is the closest track. So, McKee grinds away in her parents’ garage or in the cycle studio of her coach for the past decade-plus, former world champion Kirk Whiteman.

Whiteman said he learns so much from McKee.

“I learn so much from diabetes and how she attacks it and how she’s not going to let anything stop her,” Whiteman said. “How she’s not going to let diabetes deny her quest and she wants everybody to feel the same way, young and old and do the same thing and she’s willing to help people do that.”

Pushing weights to pound the pedals.

“Every now and again I think back at it, ‘wow, 13x national champion however, how many times has she been second? How many times has she been third? She’s medaled at every national championship she’s been to except for one,” Whiteman said.

Next up, the big one - the ‘28 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

“The clock is ticking - it was already close,” McKee said. “I came very close to qualifying for the last one and I had the huge opportunity to go out to Colorado Springs [USA Cycling Training Center] so having more opportunities arise makes it feel very surreal because now you are getting closer to where you want to be.”

Seeing is believing and McKee’s vision has never been sharper to obtain those rings.

“Having all the courage and just seeing what it is like and what it feels like because it is a very different feeling in pushing yourself. ‘Now, ok, I am almost there’ but then there’s days when I am puking in a bucket before I even do my efforts and I got to suck it up - continue to go. It’s a different switch in your brain that is like, ‘ok, this is where I need to go.”

The Olympic dreams for this little girl remain the same for this young woman now.

Follow this link to help support McKee’s goal to compete in the LA Games in 2028.