Melissa Giove is an American professional downhillmountain biker. Her nickname is The Missile. Giove was one of mountain-bike racing's first mainstream superstars, appearing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and in adverts for Reebok. Throughout her career she won 14 NORBA downhill titles and 11 world cups. Giove's other accomplishments include three overall NORBA downhill crowns, two World Cup overalls, and the 1994 world championship title.
Career
Prior to cycling, Giove was also a nationally ranked downhill skier. She did not have enough money for a ski lift ticket at first, so she traversed mountain sides on foot and skied down. One summer really changed her perspective on skiing when she got to use a mountain bike and excelled at it. That same summer she entered her first down hill race and won not only the race, but the attention of the racing community. Early on Missy raced for Yeti, along with other racers: Myles Rockwell, Jimmy Deaton, John Tomac and Johnny O'Mara, managed by former owner of Yeti Cycles, John Parker. Once she established herself, Giove moved to the Volvo-Cannondale USA cycling team. Together Giove and Myles Rockwell dominated many races under the Cannondale badge in the early 1990s. Her rule was to go big or go home, this is why she either ended up in first or on the ground hurt. During her career she endured at least ten concussions and thirty broken bones. Giove was always known for being colorful, extreme and fast talking. Giove was noted for racing with the ashes of her dog Ruffian concealed in her bra and wearing the desiccated body of her deceased pet piranha Gonzo around her neck. She is openly lesbian. Giove was inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in 2016 and was an honorary inductee into the Italian Hall of Fame in 2017. She announced her retirement from full-time racing in August 2003, and in March 2004, she appeared in an episode of the cartoonRocket Power titled "Missile Crisis", giving one of the characters a compliment. After retirement she helped finance the travel and fees for several up and coming downhill cyclists. In 2015, Giove lined up at the start line of the World Cup race at Windham, New York. This is after a ten year break from racing, to show if she could go back to racing, her wife Kristen could beat the cancer inside of her. In 2001 her way of racing resulted in a double crash at a race in Vail, Colorado. This removed her from her sport for a few months, and the pain was so horrible that she turned to usage of marijuana to help the pain. Once sponsor money slowed down, she still needed money, but coming from a different source of smuggling marijuana. In June 2009, Giove was arrested in Wilton, New York on charges of conspiring to possess and distribute 384 pounds of marijuana. Giove pleaded guilty to the charges. On November 23, 2011, she was sentenced to time served, six months of home detention and five years of supervised release. She never saw smuggling as such a big deal because she saw it as the distribution of happiness.
