Chantae McMillan grinned as she recalled their exchange:
“He said, ‘Welllll…there’s your abs.’
“And I said, ‘Yeaaaah… and everything else!’”
The personable 27-year-old Olympic heptathlete who lives and trains in Kettering is one of six strategically photographed, nude athletes featured on different covers of the annual ESPN the Magazine’s Body Issue, which hit newsstands July 10.
McMillan’s cover shows her floating on her back in midair — a picture of defined muscle and ethereal grace — as though she were catapulting herself Fosbury Flop style across a high jump bar.
A full page photo inside shows her in arms-swinging, mid-sprint stride through sand dunes. This time her sculpted body also shows a tattooed mural on her left side and the five Olympic rings on her right biceps.
This is the seventh year for the magazine’s popular Body Issue, which features elite athletes, many of whom are well-known, though none of whom has been seen quite like this before.
Over the years scores of competitors — including Venus Williams, Michael Phelps, Manny Pacquiao, Rob Gronkowski, Carl Edwards, Abby Wambach, Hope Solo, Diana Taurasi, Rhonda Rousey and even jumbo baseball slugger Prince Fielder and 77-year-old golfer Gary Player — have been featured in what is called a celebration of the athletic body in all its shapes and sizes.
Two Olympic snowboarders with local ties — silver medalist Gretchen Bleiler, who attended school in Oakwood, and Louie Vito, who grew up in Bellefontaine — have been featured.
McMillan said her offer came out of the blue:
“The lady from the magazine sent me an email and asked me to be part of it. I was shocked, very shocked, but I was all for it. I mean, we compete half-naked anyway.”
She was flown to San Diego last month and then accompanied photographer Carlos Serrao to the Imperial Sand Dunes, near Yuma, Ariz., on the Mexican border, for her camera session.
“I have an art background throughout my college days (at the University of Nebraska),” she said. “I studied to be an art teacher and I see this as art.
“I think it shows beauty in all body types. I look at it as ‘we’re athletes showcasing what it looks like and takes to do our sport at an elite level.
“I looked at it as an opportunity for me to motivate through track and field. Or maybe someone can just connect to me over healthy lifestyle habits. Either way, I saw it as a pedestal that would help me inspire people.”
The Body 2015 issue featured 24 athletes, including WNBA star Brittney Griner, gymnast Aly Raisman, World Cup soccer champ Ali Krieger and the trio of grinning 300-plus pound Indianapolis Colts offensive linemen Jack Mewhort, Todd Herremans and Anthony Castonzo.
Besides McMillan, the other athletes to grace this year’s covers were the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Kevin Love, Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper, New York Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr., Olympic swimming star NataIie Coughlin and hammer thrower Amanda Bingson.
Harper told the Washington Post that before his photo shoot he went into an intense training and eating regimen to better hone his body. The last week before the shoot, he said he only drank raw juices. The day of his camera session he ate raw potatoes so the glucose and glycine in them would go straight to his muscles, which needed last-minute nourishment.
McMillan said she wasn’t told beforehand about any of the other athletes who would be included in the issue:
“They didn’t want anything to leak out, so they said nothing. I didn’t find out until the magazine first came out online on July 6.”
As for special dieting before the shoot, she shook her head and said she simply stuck to the training program her coach, Lynn Smith — the Kettering-based elite athlete mentor who grew up in Yellow Springs and once coached at Central State — had prescribed for her:
“A week before the magazine came out, they called and told me I’d made the cover. I was stoked.I was like ‘Get outta Dodge!’ It was awesome.”
McMillan’s cover is the most dramatic of the six and it has garnered much response.
In the past few days she’s been congratulated — either through social media or in person at a red carper party in Los Angeles last Tuesday — by people like Washington Wizards point guard John Wall, New York Yankees great Derek Jeter, former NBA standouts Steve Nash and John Salley, St. Louis Rams defensive end Chris Long and the folks at Athletes in Action in Xenia.
Her Instagram followers have gone from around 7,000 to over 15,000 in a few days, she said. Her Twitter following has blown up, as well.
She’s even gotten marriage proposals from people she doesn’t know.
Wednesday night she was a guest at the ESPYs in Los Angeles and the night prior was the Body Issue party.
“That was my first red carpet experience and it was pretty awesome,” she said quietly. “It was nice just to meet and talk to some of the other people in the magazine.”
She started to laugh:
“Odell Beckham Jr., he joked about the two of us both putting our butts right out there on the front cover. And I said, “Yep, there they are.”
‘Pretty sweet genes’
“I don’t look in the mirror and think ‘slim,’ I look in the mirror and I’m like ‘whoa beast,’ ” the 5-foot-8, 153-pound McMillan told ESPN’s Morty Ain. “It’s just crazy how much the body changes. Looking in the mirror I get surprised like every other week. It’s like I’m Wonder Woman.”
She told Ain she had to thank her parents, who gave her “some pretty sweet genes.”
Peggy and Badger (that’s her dad’s first name) both had military careers and their only child gravitated to sports.
Chantae was a two-time state long jump champ at Rolla High School in Missouri. She chose Nebraska over collegiate suitors like Ohio State and LSU and became an All-American pentathlon and heptathlon champ.
In August 2011, soon after graduation, she suffered a torn patella tendon in her left knee. She ended up at Revolution Physical Therapy in Pittsburgh under the care of Dr. Lyneil Mitchell, who got her healed and stronger again.
That’s when McMillan moved to the Dayton area to train with Smith, who had guided heptathlete Hyleas Fountain to the silver medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She remains one of two Americans to medal in the Olympic event.
At the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials, McMillan put together the best performance of her life in the taxing seven disciplines of the heptathlon (100 meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200 meters, long jump, javelin throw and 800 meters), finished third and made the U.S Olympic team for the London Games.
Although she wasn’t expected to medal, she did well at the onset, then got ill and finished 29th.
“It was still a great experience,” she said. “To walk side-by-side with all the other Olympians in the opening ceremony and know I was representing my country was special. I felt the most joy when I looked into the stands during the parade of athletes and saw some people holding a ‘USA’ sign. Right then I knew I was able to share the moment with them.”
Regaining her form
In Friday afternoon’s sweltering heat — after having just taken a red-eye flight from Los Angeles that included a plane switch in Denver and an arrival into Cincinnati at 4 a.m. — McMillan loosened up on the Fairmont High track as she waited for Smith to arrive for their training session.
Two senior citizens were slowly circling the track in their own workouts and they had no idea with whom they were sharing the running lanes. No clue the young woman in the white t-shirt and black tights was the Body Issue cover girl who had been the hit of the red carpet three days earlier in Los Angeles.
And that’s just the way the down-to-earth McMillan likes it.
Although she’s had an offer to train at an Olympic facility in San Diego and did leave here after the London Games for two years to train with a bevy of other top-tier athletes in Gainesville, Fla., she’s back and says “Dayton is a good base for me.”
She said her primary reason is the guidance of Smith:
“Looking back I feel it was an immature decision for me to go to Florida. I thought I needed more coaches, more people to train with, but Lynn is a smart man. He knows what it takes to coach a heptathlete and has put a program together specifically for me.”
She does have a boyfriend from Sidney, but she lives in Kettering with her two dogs, a 6-year-old Great Dane named Moose and an adopted American Bulldog she calls Benny. Her love of dogs is seen in the big paw print she has tattooed inside her left arm.
She trains at the Fairmont track and has gotten a membership at the Trent Arena fitness center. When she needs a hurdles training partner she seeks out Cassandra Lloyd, the Wright State assistant coach and former star hurdler for the Raiders.
Other than that, McMillan pretty much trains solo. But she said she likes it here because of the low-key atmosphere and the lack of distraction.
Even so, she was derailed for a while by an emergency surgery in late April to remove one of her ovaries after the fallopian tube got tangled.
A month ago she was the top American finisher — and fifth overall — in the Capitol Cup competition in Ottawa, Canada. She said because of injuries and the recent surgery it was the first full heptathlon she had completed in three years.
Next month she competes in Germany and in September she may go to a meet in Italy.
As she works to regain her form, she is doing so without any major sponsors and no shoe contract. To help support her efforts, she does both personal training and trains young track and field athletes. To contact her, go to her website: contact.chantae@gmail.com.
All her efforts now are geared to a return to the Olympic stage and the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
And that brings us to another stunning picture of her.
In this one, she said with a smile, she’s not naked:
“Part of my mental approach is to envision myself on the podium in Rio. I’ve got a medal around my neck.”
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