Sakakibara roars to glorious Olympic BMX race triumph

Saya Sakakibara has pedaled furiously to Olympic glory on her BMX bike, scorching over the bumps and hollows of the Paris track to race to a landmark gold medal.

Three years after Australia watched in horror as she was taken away on a stretcher following a crash in a semi-final at the Tokyo Games, the 24-year-old Gold Coast rider completed her emotional comeback at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines circuit on Friday.

Watched by her family, including brother Kai who suffered a life-changing brain injury after another crash in a World Cup race in Bathurst in 2020, Sakakibara delivered the race of her life in the final to become the first Australian BMX racer to win Olympic gold .

Sakakibara had repeated concussion problems after Tokyo and considered retirement.

But on Friday night, she was hugged at the finish by her French partner Romain Mahieu, who minutes before had won bronze in a home country sweep of the men’s BMX racing podium.

Her victory followed a first women’s BMX freestyle medal for Australia, won by fellow Queenslander Natalya Diehm on Wednesday.

It is the second Australian cycling gold medal, following Grace Brown’s win on day one in the road time trial. The last time Australian cycling won multiple gold medals at an Olympics was the record haul of six at Athens in 2004.

Sakakibara delivered an extraordinary performance of consistent brilliance, winning all three of his quarter-final heats on Thursday and all three of Friday’s semi-final races too, also producing the two fastest times in qualifying for the final.

But in the past, the double World Cup overall champion has occasionally buckled in the biggest one-off finals, like the world championships in May when she was excellent in the preliminary rounds but bombed in the final.

She felt that loss was a timely “kick in the backside” for the biggest test of all, and this time she was ready, roaring away at the start to reach the first tight corner first for her seventh consecutive race.

From there, no-one was going to catch her as she blitzed away on the 400m course to win in 34.231 seconds, way clear of all of her seven rivals, with Dutch racer Manon Veenstra finishing a distant runner up in 34.954 with Zoe Claessens taking the bronze.

Britain’s reigning champion Beth Shriever, who had also won every race before the final, finished eighth and last.

Fifteen minutes earlier, though, another Australian hope Izaac Kennedy had suffered a dramatic fall on the first corner of the men’s final.

Knowing he needed a blistering start to give himself any chance of winning a medal, the 23-year-old Gold Coast rider tried to dip down wide and swiftly on the first of the U-bends to get into contention, only to clip the side of the track and go tumbling at high speed.

Slumped in misery on the track, the good news was that he was able to struggle to his feet, remount and slowly make his way back to the finish.

France swept the men’s medals, with Joris Daudet winning ahead of Sylvain Andre and Mahieu.