This past August, Mike Van Wyck entered his first Canadian National Contest and, to the surprise of all the experts, he emerged victorious with a brand new IFBB Pro Card in hand. In fact, in this history-making win, he defeated two heavy "favorites" in the super heavyweight class proving, once again, that sometimes the "darkhorse" competitor can be the most dangerous. Find out who this mystery man is, where he came from, and what you can expect from him in the upcoming 2010 season.
`Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the
house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
Everyone was crushed from a high-volume leg training
session earlier that day and, since it was still too soon
for delayed-onset muscle soreness to make every
movement excruciatingly painful, they crashed hard.
There were no visions of sugar plums dancing in their
heads. These dedicated lifters would not waste their
carb intake so frivolously. But, like children of ALL
AGES, these guys were dreaming of what might be
found under their trees.
It was still the era of Frank Zane, where the beauty if symmetry dominated over competitors possessing beastly mass. To those that felt uninspired by the beach-bodies in vogue, Casey Viator, Tim Belknap and Tom Platz were exalted as unredeemed heroes ¾ always placing well but forced to look on as the likes of Dickerson, Makkawy and Bannout pranced off with the big checks. It was almost as if the meek truly had inherited the Earth.
One of the many things you will observe about human nature is that we tend to mock what we don't understand. Whether it's a new way of doing something, or anything out of the norm, or someone who looks out of place, the initial human reaction is to chide, mock, ridicule, etc.. . . mostly on the basis of a cursory look at the wrapper. It's rare that something unknown or out of place is accepted with any neutrality pending investigation; and that's only if there is one. Oddities are more easily dismissed than probed. We also tend to generalize and profile those different from us based on accepted stereotypes.
The 2009 NPC Nationals is in the bag and Cedric McMillan is going to Disney Land or wherever else it is a bodybuilder would go after emerging victorious from perhaps the most deeply stacked field of national level competitors in history. There was a lot of talk going into this weekend about the depth of the competition, but no one had any idea just how stacked the field would be until the curtain went up. It was insane to see how many guys brought their A game. I have never seen a Nationals competition with such a remarkable assemblage of high end physiques. Just about every bodybuilding insider I spoke with this weekend had the same opinion. To win the Nationals any year is a crowning moment to be sure, but to win this year, you had to be a freak of epic proportions, and that's just what Cedric McMillan is. Not only is he freak, but no one even saw him coming. The guy virtually came out of nowhere and stole the show. Check out the Rx Muscle Contest Photo Database to see for yourself!
