CLEVELAND — It's the inaugural year for BMX freestyle in the Olympics, and representing Team USA is a man from Ohio who you may have even driven past while he was training and had no idea.
It may not look like much from the outside, but inside a dilapidated warehouse on Cleveland's east side is where Nick Bruce spent most days training for a gold medal.
"Every time I come in here, it's like a dream comes true," Bruce told 3News. "As a little kid, I always had my own ramps set up in my parents' back yard. I was like, 'That'd be the dream to create your own skate park.'"
Bruce grew up in Hubbard, a suburb of Youngstown. The youngest of four kids, he can thank his older brother for quite literally launching him on his Olympic journey.
"My earliest memory of riding a bike is my brother taking off my training wheels and he pushed me down our driveway hill," he remembered. "I fell in love with it ever since."
"He had these little baby ramps about this high that he use to jump over," Lisa Bruce, Nick's mother, laughed. "He was just always obsessed with his bike."
"You could just tell that it was a passion for him," father Ed Bruce added.
As his time on a bike rolled on, Nick just kept getting better and better.
"I just fell in love with flying into the air with my bike."
While the tricks came naturally to him, the watching took a little getting used to for his parents.
"I used to break out in hives when I used to watch him, because he doesn't have any fear," Lisa recalled.
"Oh, I'm nervous right now," Ed chuckled.
The nerves come with good reason: Nick's had numerous bumps, bruises, stiches and surgeries along the way. Most recently, he suffered a broken collarbone in 2018, and in 2019, he broke his face.
"That was the first time I was like, 'Wow, I'm afraid to ride my bike,'" he said. "What really helped overcome that is just reminding myself how much I love riding my bike and the pleasure of doing those tricks."
Nick never hit the brakes and after qualifying for the Olympic Games in Tokyo. The whole town of Hubbard showed their pride with signs on nearly every street corner, and his family and friends sent him off in style with a big going away party.
"It literally feels like my graduation party," Nick said after hugging another friend. "We had the same tent in the same exact spot, and it kind of feels like déjà vu."
His family and the town are proud, there's no question about that. Now, they're all hoping that everything he's worked for, whether as a kid in the back yard or as an adult inside an old Cleveland warehouse, leads to gold.
"It's kind of surreal," Lisa said. "It makes you cry when you think about it."
"The last 3 1/2 years, you could tell he was dedicated 110%," Ed added.
"Energy, blood, sweat and tears put into this sport," Nick says. "A gold medal, I think, would just mean the world to me."
