BMX Freestyle: England and Australia Take First Gold Medals in New Competition


New for the TOKYO – Tokyo Games, BMX freestyle is an expert demonstration of bike handling and aerial tricks as cyclists fly their 20-inch unicycles on a custom ramp track.

Ramps have several transitions, pushing riders skyward before descending back onto the ramp and moving on to the next trick.

Sometimes it looked like the riders were in a video game.

They spin their handlebars or bike stem in the air up to three times in a single motion. All these tricks are done with a calm awareness to find the handlebars or pedals when it’s time to return to Earth, where a panel of judges scores them in the bike’s only judged event.

At the inaugural BMX Freestyle event in Tokyo, some subdued drama surfaced. On the women’s side, Hannah Roberts seemed to be in a class of her own. After the first runs, he easily took first place, scoring 96.10 points out of 100, almost seven points behind his closest rival.

But Sunday wasn’t Roberts’ day, and he had to make do with silver. Crashing on her first run, Briton Charlotte Worthington managed to do a 360-degree backflip, a first in women’s competition, and did a few more tricky tricks to win.

On the men’s side, Australia’s Logan Martin dominated his first run and was unbeatable in the second runs. With three riders remaining, Kenneth Tencio Esquivel sat in third place as Costa Rica looked set to win its first medal at the Games. However, Venezuela’s Daniel Dhers used his second round to position himself for silver. That was enough to knock Costa Rica out of the competition for the medal.

When Declan Brooks won the bronze medal, Britain had taken a third of all BMX medals, with one rider winning a medal in each discipline.



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