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AURORA, Colo.—Inigo San Millan helped train Tour de France contenders and champions, six Pro Cycling Teams and countless athletes from the worlds of track and field, rowing, triathlons and basketball.

After 14 years of experience in the field of sports medicine, the native of Spain has earned a solid reputation as one of the top applied physiologists in the world. But San Millan, who will serve as the Director of the Exercise Physiology and Human Performance Lab at the new Anschutz Health and Wellness Center when it opens next year, isn’t shy about admitting to a major shortcoming.

“I’m a frustrated cyclist. I’ll always be,” said San Millan, who abandoned soccer as child in Spain to ride a bike. “I never raced at the pro-tour level, just a low key level. My bike still lives in the trunk of my car. I try to force myself to ride twice a week.”

San Millan abandoned his life as a competitive cyclist, moving to Fort Collins to receive his bachelor’s from Colorado State University and returning to Spain to get his doctorate from the University of the Basque Country. But the shift toward a life as a physiologist didn’t separate San Millan from the cycling world, or from the larger sphere of competitive sports.

In his current capacity as the director of the Exercise Physiology and Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Colorado Hospital, San Millan has been able to keep a place in his professional life for competition and endurance.

“The thing is, I understand athletes very well. I was one of them,” San Millan said. “I made a lot of mistakes. Now being a physiologist, I know even more. I see many athletes and I like to get involved, because I can really help them. Same thing goes with recreational athletes.”

With a 2,500-square-foot Human Performance Lab at his disposal at the Anschutz site, San Millan said he’ll bring his experiences to bear. Casual athletes and patients looking to start a brand new exercise routine can benefit from the kind of diagnostic tests and carefully tailored regiments that are a matter of course for the pros.

“It’s a very nice experience for me, as well as being able to apply all the knowledge and the experience that I’ve been accumulating,” San Millan said. “We can implement those with recreational athletes as well as some populations with cardiovascular disease.”

The stress on exercise as a means of clinical care and, perhaps more importantly, prevention, will be a big part of the philosophy behind the new center, a facility that will incorporate everything from massage therapy to acupuncture. It represents a larger shift toward preventive care, San Millan said, one that seeks to make physical exercise and activity a standard part of care.

“We need new thinking in order to prescribe correct exercise programs that can be fun and improve health. We know that it’s not just about losing weight. It’s about improving metabolic health,” San Millan said. “It starts with a change in lifestyle. It’s about trying to improve peoples’ mentality about exercise.”

He’s quick to cite unsettling statistics from the state and national level: close to 60 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, approximately 80 percent of conditions primary care physicians treat are related to obesity, Colorado ranks in the top 10 U.S. states when it comes to rising rates of obesity in young people. It’s a widespread problem that makes the Wellness Center’s mission all the more critical, San Millan said.

“It’s a model that integrates every possible aspect that we can think of when it comes to preventive medicine,” San Millan said. “It’s about transforming our society and making it healthier.”

The large-scale goal of impacting the entire community is one San Millan got to explore as a cyclist.

“In the sports world, you never have that opportunity,” he added.