Photos by Brian Addison.

Tara McCormick has an aura about her that is infectious, even beyond the fact that she’s a stellar 17 year-old athlete. It’s hard to imagine what the nation’s top junior track cyclist would be like, so one shouldn’t hold expectations. But she is, through and through, a bubbly, authentically convivial athlete.

And it is due not only to her deep love of the sport of cycling itself, but the deeper familial connection she holds with how she got started.

“My grandma is actually the Masters World Champion,” she stated, “so she passed the torch onto me.”

Her grandparents were always involving her in cycling and her first pedaling experiences were with her grandfather on a tandem bike before she was tall enough to ride on her own. And these weren’t rides around the block. Given her grandparents’ immersion in biking, 40-mile rides were not uncommon (even on the tandem).

Tara’s Bike Pure emblem, an acknowledgement that she’ll refrain from using drugs while biking.

As McCormick got older, cycling became something she found impossibly hard to stop.

“It’ll be my eighth year [competitively biking] in January,” she explains, “so when I started, I just never stopped. Not to mention it’s nice to live in a city where there are bike lanes and cars are beginning to know how to drive around you.”

Her appreciation for Long Beach has existed since she moved here as a baby after being born in Las Vegas. Not only is the city deeply appreciative of bike culture and slowly emerging as an innovator amongst urban spaces in this regard, McCormick has the only Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI)-certified indoor cycling track in nearby Carson that she is able to continually train at.

This training helped her regularly take on 45-mile rides, her most common route being Long Beach to Dana Point. It also initiated her towards her first long ride—100 miles—when she was 11-years-old, taking her from Anaheim to San Diego.

“We had to take the Amtrak back because… That’s a long ride,” she said while laughing. “I passed out for two days.”

These cycling endeavors brought her to her first USA Junior Track Nationals championship, held this past July in Pennsylvania. She competed in an event called the Omnium, an aggregation of six biking events that include a flying lap (against the clock), a points race of 10km, an elimination race, an individual pursuit, a scratch race and a final time trial.

Each event provides riders with certain points, the ultimate aim being to score the least amount of points possible.

The Omnium isn’t just one event, then, but an accumulation of biking talent that spans different areas of the sport. Like Iron Man, it is defined as the ultimate competition and McCormick took home first place.

Now, her title will take her to New Zealand for the 2012 Junior World Track Championship, August 22 through 26.

“All the best juniors from around the world will go down there to race—it’s certainly nerve-racking considering 20 countries compete,” McCormick said, clasping her hands between her legs as if anxiety suddenly overtook her.

Despite the outcome of her upcoming race—of which she will be “crazy Instagramming” (@taramccormick17)—she has aspirations to continue biking well into future.

“I want the Olympics. I have friends in the Olympics this year and because of my age, I wasn’t able to compete,” she explained, with biking have an age limit unlike many of the other sports. “I will be in Rio in 2016.”

If this comment—particularly following Long Beach’s astounding performance at this year’s Olympics—does not bring a smile to your face or pride in your city, well… Perhaps you should hop on that tandem.