Support for LAist comes from
Audience-funded nonprofit news
Stay Connected
Audience-funded nonprofit news
Listen
Podcasts Take Two
The Wheel Thing: Supercross champ Ryan Dungey makes it on a Wheaties Box
solid orange rectangular banner
()
Jan 28, 2016
Listen 5:44
The Wheel Thing: Supercross champ Ryan Dungey makes it on a Wheaties Box
Supercross racer Ryan Dungey becomes the first in his sport to appear on a Wheaties box, and he's really stoked about it.
Supercross champ Ryan Dungey is the first from his sport to be featured on a Wheaties box.
Supercross champ Ryan Dungey is the first from his sport to be featured on a Wheaties box.
(
General Mills
)

Supercross racer Ryan Dungey becomes the first in his sport to appear on a Wheaties box, and he's really stoked about it.

Sure, it's not an Olympic Gold Medal or the Heisman Trophy, but being on a Wheaties box is a pretty big athletic honor.

The latest honoree is a 26-year-old, motocross phenom. Ryan Dungey has been riding dirt bikes since he was five, and he's just the kind of champ a sport looking to build an audience can use - handsome, warm, unassuming and just a nice guy. He is, after all, from Minnesota.

Our Wheel Thing guide, motor critic Susan Carpenter, met Dungey in the cereal aisle of an Orange County Target store, and they talked about the rigors of the indoor, dirt-racing sport of Supercross, Dungey's childhood dreams of being on a Wheaties box, and what it takes to speed around a track filled with hills, dales and obstacles, while trying to avoid colliding with 19 other racers.