MISSOULA — Growing up, Sterling Reneau was always moving, with an emphasis on going fast.
"I was nonstop. It was nonstop athletics," Reneau told MTN Sports during a recent trip home back in July. "My brother (Zane) was playing soccer and basketball and football and track, and I was playing soccer and track, and we were doing tennis camps and swim camps and all that stuff growing up. That's just how we lived."
So naturally, the Missoula native was bound for a future in sports, one that would take him through Sentinel High School, then to the University of Montana on a track and field scholarship, and now, on the doorstep of making waves with Team USA cycling.
But it's a journey that almost didn't happen.
"My athletic career in high school and in college was a second chance," Reneau said. "I had a crazy knee surgery when I was a freshman or going into sophomore year of high school that, I mean, I basically couldn't walk from when I was an eighth grader to middle of freshman year."
Sterling suffered from osteochondritis dissecans, a joint disorder where essentially the end of his femur died in three spots, so parts of the bone or cartilage begin to separate from the other part of the bone.
The stress and trauma over the years exacerbated the condition, so Reneau needed surgery, which came right before his sophomore year of high school.
"I was on crutches basically from the middle of my freshman year of high school all the way to the middle of my sophomore year of high school," he remembered. "And then after that, I didn't basically play any sports from eighth grade to my junior year of school."
Eventually the healing began, and Reneau would be able to compete in sports again. He chose to focus on track and field, and though he competed just two years in high school, he starred for the Spartans as a senior in 2014, where he was a three-time individual all-state performer and was also all-state on both of Sentinel's relay teams that year.
"Track, that was where I just felt like I could just forget about everything and just run," Reneau said.
From there, Sterling would compete at the University of Montana, where his father, Paul Reneau, was an assistant coach, and he'd turn in a career where he was a three-time Big Sky Conference champion for the Griz — once in the indoor 400 and another time in the indoor 1,600-relay — and was part of an outdoor 1,600-relay team that set the school record at the time in 2019.
"At one point, being ranked in the top 100 in the nation for the 400 from not being able to walk, I was like, I'll take it," Reneau said with a laugh. "I think that if I hadn't had all those injuries, I could have ran a lot faster, but I still did stuff that almost nobody gets to do so I'm never gonna bat an eye at that stuff."
But Reneau wasn't ready to be done with athletics after college, so he went back to the well with a sport he grew up passionate about: cycling.
"Cycling was one of those things that I was able to do through all of those injuries," he said. "And it was just kind of a way for me to stay active and kind of push myself outside of running or playing soccer or whatever other sports I was doing.
"We were just on our bikes and and doing it. I like going fast, and so it's just another way for me to go fast."
Reneau lived in Montana for a few more years, before eventually making his way to Scottsdale, Ariz., for a job at a world-class cycling shop.
Not long after, a friend informed Reneau about the Search for Speed, a talent identification and integration audition that Team USA cycling was putting on for its developmental team.
"I was like, well, that's the only chance that I'm probably going to have," Reneau said. "So I drove 400 miles from Scottsdale to (Los Angeles) to get on a watt bike for six seconds. And that turned into eight months of testing and training and going back and forth between L.A. and Scottsdale and doing integration camps."
Then, great news followed.
"And after that eight months, they had what it takes to make the development team. I think there were around 25-2,600 athletes that tried out for that first iteration of the Search for Speed and and from that three men and two women made it, and so I was one of the guys," he said. "And, yeah, here we are."
So the kid from Missoula made it in track cycling with the Team USA developmental team in the team sprint.
He trains, cycles and lifts as essentially a full-time, unpaid volunteer while currently living in Los Angeles. He competed at nationals this summer and has eyes on making the national team and, of course, someday, the Olympics.
"I have to see it through to the end, because things just keep going right," he said. "The whole time you're doing it, you're asking yourself, 'Why? Why am I putting myself through all this stress? Why am I putting my family and my loved ones through all of this to sacrifice, to get the opportunity to maybe compete in five years?'
"You just have to throw yourself out there and hope you swim. And if you don't, then you readjust, and you make the choices to reset. And for me, everything just keeps going in the right direction. And so, you're just going to ride that as long as I can."
His father was an Olympian for Belize back in the 1980s, and Sterling hopes to follow in his footsteps.
It's a long way to go, but knowing Reneau's story, he's no stranger to overcoming the obstacles.
"You go through it in your head over and over and over and over," he said. "What would you do if these opportunities happen? When I was a young kid, and looking at where I'm at now, it's still just like, what the heck? How have we made this happen?
"You put in the work, you put in the work, you put in the work, and then the opportunity arises. But then, when the opportunity arises, it's still just like, I'm actually doing it."
