17-year-old Isaiah Morrison started biking in 2020 — on Sunday, he competed in his first gravel race

Isaiah Morrison IV can synthesize the relationship with his son, Isaiah Morrison V, into two sentences.

“At one point in time, I couldn’t get him off my wheel,” he started. “Now, I can’t keep up with him.”

The younger Morrison started riding bikes — exclusively road bikes — with his father during the summer of 2020. On Sunday, he made the Little Bighorn 50-mile event at Bighorn Gravel in Gypsum his first foray into gravel. Ever.

“It was really hard. Probably one of the hardest rides I’ve ever done,” the rising senior from Alexandria, Virginia said after crossing the line in 5 hours, 34 minutes and 33 seconds.

“It was his first time on gravel, first time on single track — he handled it like a professional,” said Anthony Carter, Isaiah’s coach and mentor, after the pair crossed the line together. Carter is the director and coach of Get-It-In Cycling, a club for BIPOC cyclists with over 5,000 members, including Isaiah, who has been racing local criteriums for the last two seasons.

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Carter is also one of three ‘Community Leaders’ on the Scuderia Pinarello team. The goal of the Italian bike brand’s Scuderia ambassador group is to “foster excellence, while at the same time, open doors to underrepresented communities in cycling by giving athletes the support they need to reach their full potential in whichever discipline or initiative they are dedicating themselves to,” according to Kim Rogers, Pinarello’s US marketing director and visionary of the Scuderia program. 

The team is broken into ‘Adventure,’ ‘Competitive,’ and ‘Community Leaders’ tiers. The last tier is for athletes, like Carter, who “embody the brand’s dedication to supporting and growing underrepresented communities at large.” Through Scuderia, Carter leads a program where he mentors junior athletes on the ins and outs of the professional cycling world.

“And Isaiah was selected because of the good work that he does on and off the bike,” Carter praised his first pupil.

Interestingly, when he first got in the saddle to join his dad on a few recovery rides during the pandemic, Isaiah wasn’t too keen about the whole pedaling thing.

“At first I hated it to be honest,” he admitted. “I wasn’t enjoying it, but eventually I really got into it as I got faster and stronger.”

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“He started getting better and better, so I started taking him to group rides,” the elder Morrison said. “We would do more and more challenging rides as the season progressed. He discovered that he really enjoys climbing. So, he got strong in a fairly short time.”

Though friends were encouraging him to join the GII race squad, initially Isaiah had little interest.

“But then he kind of realized that he had some natural talent in this area,” Isaiah senior said. “(He) joined the race team, got really tight with Coach Carter, and we’ve been riding hard ever since.” 

After his first gravel race, Isaiah remained slumped in a chair, too exhausted to even eat the large ice cream and churro dessert from one of the finish-line food trucks. Or perhaps he was daydreaming about his favorite part of the course: the long, gradual climbs.

“I want to go pro,” he said. “I want to see how far I can take this sport, because I really love it and the sense of community that comes with it.”