Chantae McMillan has competed in the heptathlon in the Olympics and won multiple event titles and pentathlon and heptathlon performances with the Nebraska track and field team.
Yet what McMillan endured as a competitor on “The Titan Games” challenged her in ways she had never before experienced.
“The obstacles that they put us through, they were things I never thought I would do in my life, and I will never do again in my life,” McMillan said. “You go 100 percent for less than 5 minutes, and I understand from a track perspective of doing stuff like an 800 in 2 minutes, but it’s just different how it tests you physically.
“That’s why I wanted to do it, because of the challenges it was going to give me from a different standpoint.”
McMillan contractually can’t say how she fared on the NBC series, but viewers can find out beginning with Monday’s premiere of season two of “The Titan Games,” hosted by “The Rock,” Dwayne Johnson.
The series, which is 13 episodes, includes McMillan, a professional athlete, and Jaime Seeman, an obstetrician and gynecologist, as former Nebraska student-athletes who qualified after competing in a combine.
The series features such everyday professionals with inspiring stories and backgrounds, and this season tests their athletic skills against six celebrity athletes. That brings in yet a third former Husker, pole-vaulter Jessie Graff, who’s a star “American Ninja Warrior” and professional stuntwoman in Hollywood.
Producers selected Seeman after she completed an application and sent in a video to the show. McMillan, however, received an invitation through Instagram to the tryout combine, where she and Seeman were in the same group. They are among 18 women, selected from the original 100, to appear on the series, along with 18 men. Four of the 36 competitors are active military members. Other professions range from skydivers to dancers to opera singers.
The 32 year-old McMillan, a native of Rolla, Missouri, now lives in Alabama with her husband, Army Warrant Officer 1 Devon Langhorst, a helicopter pilot stationed at Fort Rucker, Alabama, and their 18-month-old son, Otto.
McMillan is also the daughter of two career soldiers, Badger and Peggy McMillan. Her father died suddenly in 2015.
“He went in for gallbladder surgery, and then a week later he went back in, just like feeling bad, and then he was tired and fell asleep,” McMillan said. “And that was it.”
Badger McMillan was 64.
“He was great. He was always at every single track meet with my mom,” McMillan said. “Every single track meet, they were always at together. I’m an only child, so they were very supportive. It’s sad, him not being here and being able to meet his grandson.”
McMillan’s mother attended filming of the series.
“She had a lot of leave to use up before she retired,” McMillan said, “so she spent the whole 20 days with me and my son in the hotel.”
McMillan finished third in the USA Olympic Trials in 2016 in the heptathlon, missing the Olympics not long after her father’s death, but qualified for the 2012 Olympics and finished 29th.
“I was there. That was my experience,” she said. “I left there happy but still hungry, so that’s why I’m still training.”
McMillan is now focusing only on javelin. In March, she wasn’t certain if she would be where she needed to be by June for the Olympic trials, so the global pandemic that postponed the Tokyo Olympics to 2021 came as a blessing in disguise, she said.
“I need to work on positions, and having the right angle and degree to throw the javelin,” said McMillan, who’s now back in Missouri, running on a nearby track and lifting weights as part of her training.
As for “The Titan Games,” McMillan felt she was well prepared.
“Just having that diversity training for seven events always prepared me for this,” she said. “I didn’t do anything extra going into the TV show, because I felt prepared endurance-wise and strength-wise just from my training still.
“I can look back at one obstacle in particular and know that my strength endurance was what helped me in that competition.”
McMillan said meeting like-minded people, learning their stories and remaining in touch with them has been her best takeaway from the whole experience.
“Probably if you ask all of the competitors there, we all enjoyed like being around each other,” McMillan said. “We were around each other all the time, living in the same hotel, living on set together. Just learning about them and their different backgrounds and their stories that keep them motivated to want to be better, that has still motivated me to this day.”
As for her “story,” McMillan is eager to see how NBC portrays her background.
“I’m honestly waiting to see what they have put together for what my story is,” she said. “Everything I’ve talked about with them is that I’m an Army wife, I am raising a year-and-a-half-old son, I’m an Olympian and my father has passed away. Those are the stories I’ve given them, so I’ll wait to see how they put that together.”
McMillan said she came to Nebraska in large part because of coach Gary Pepin, whom she regarded as the best horizontal and vertical jumps coaches in the country, and for an opportunity to win conference titles, then in the Big 12.
Mission accomplished.
As a senior in 2011, McMillan repeated as the Big 12 indoor pentathlon and outdoor heptathlon champion, and she was a first-team All-American in the pentathlon after finishing in a tie for second at the NCAA Championships with a school-record 4,396 points.
More importantly to her, she helped Nebraska win a team Big 12 title, too.
“I sat in my car and cried afterwards when we won as a team,” McMillan said. “I didn’t cry after winning my own championships.
“I just loved training all the time. I loved going into the Devaney Center and training with my teammates. I honestly was more proud of our team, because we all did our part.”
Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.
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