A recap of bike stuff from the first week of the 2024 Olympics
I spent the first 20+ years of my life on a BMX bike, then later did some mountain bike and cyclocross racing. I follow bike events to this day, so here are my quick thoughts on bike-related events from the Paris Olympics so far.
BMX Freestyle (park)
BMX freestyle (known as the "park" event in most venues) is relatively new to the Olympics, added in Tokyo. It's still a niche sport on the world stage, and since the world cycling federation built a whole qualification system for it, it requires that riders make the podium at BMX events all over the world. This is unusual, since mostly people compete on their own continent and there's not much money in the sport to support global travel. Despite that, the US has a group of riders that did all the necessary travel so we had some pretty good athletes in Paris.
But all that travel means you don't necessarily get the absolute best riders on earth because they didn't travel to compete at small events in China or Peru or Estonia over the last two years. On the men's side, personally I would have loved to see Kevin Peraza (Mexico), Ryan Williams (Australia), and Daniel Sandoval (US) competing in Paris, but on the women's side, every great rider was there.
Also? I wish they would add flatland as an option, since it's so big in Europe and Japan, and still has good Americans keeping it alive.
Women's
This event was Hannah Roberts' (US) to win. She got silver in Tokyo and was the heavy favorite this year in Paris. She qualified first way ahead of others, but during practice she collided with another rider over a spine jump, then punched the ground in frustration, and I think hurt herself in the process. She ended up 8th after crashing on an under rotated front flip and crashing out early on her second run. She's going to have to wait another four years to try again, which sucks.
Deng Yawen from China rode well, and I loved seeing my longtime SoCal local favorite, Perris Benegas come in second. Honestly, she didn't have as hard of tricks (no backflips, no tail whips) as others, but she rides with an awesome flowy style that harkens back to the best riders of the 1980s and 1990s. Natalya Diehm from Australia rode great and deserved third.
I will say the judging was a little odd in that any slight bobble lost you tons of points. The 7th place rider from China, Sun Jiaqi did incredible, super hard tricks like a double tail whip, but slipped a pedal near the end and got docked 20 points off what score she should have earned. In the past, most park events were judged on the difficulty of tricks and not how perfect you rode, but today's olympic scoring felt like gymnastics or ice skating in that the judges wanted absolute perfection.
Men's
On the men's side, it was nice to see José Torres win, he deserved it and also won the X Games last month in Ventura against the best in the world. I was stoked to see Kieran Reilly get second, as he's been training for this event for years and specializes in really hard crazy stuff we used to call "video game tricks" because they showed up in Playstation bmx games but everyone thought they were impossible to pull in real life (like a quadruple tail whip, which a few guys can do now).
I was surprised to see Logan Martin not defend his Tokyo gold after crashing on a couple small tricks. He's known as a trick machine and master and rarely ever slips a pedal so it was weird to not see him on the podium again. Honestly, the top five guys all could have won it with the crazy tricks they pulled, it was up to the judges to figure out who deserved medals.
BMX racing
BMX racing in the US isn't as big as it was in the 1980s, but we always have a couple good riders out there.
Women's
I was really hoping to seeing Alise Willoughby (US) finally snatch a gold after getting silver in 2016 and crashing out of the 2020 games while being a medal favorite. She's the current world champion of BMX so it was hers to lose this year. I watched every qualifier race and she came out super strong, getting first or second in all her early rounds, but then started falling to 4th or 5th in semi final heats later in the day. I think she was gassed out by the final, got a bad start, and couldn't muscle anything better than 6th place, which is a bummer as she'll have to make it to her fifth olympics in her late 30s to try again next time in Los Angeles.
Men's
Honestly, the US usually only has one or two pretty good elite men in BMX and Cameron Wood did really well in all his qualifiers. It was cool to see France sweep the podium, but totally surprising since they've never had a BMX race medal before, and now they have three. The venue went nuts when they crossed the line 1, 2, and 3.
Time Trial (road)
The TT is a timed solo event and it's kind of boring to watch, so I caught highlights of the top finishers. It looks like there as a lot of rain during both races and several favorites on the women's side crashed while out on the course. Riders also complained of the rough cobblestone roads of Paris, since a TT bike typically has really skinny tiny tires for aerodynamics that don't grip well or soak up bumps (also why crashes happened).
Women's
The rain was a factor and several medal favorites went down along the course. I really wanted to see Chloé Dygert win for the US, but she slid out in a couple corners and hit the deck, but was riding so fast that she still nabbed bronze even after wasting 10-20sec on the ground each time.
Men's
It was great to see Remco Evenepoel win the men's TT, as he's the current world champion and a great specialist in the discipline. I wanted to see Wout van Aert do well too, so bronze was pretty great for him.
Side note: both of them recently finished the Tour de France and did this race a week later. The final stage of the Tour de France was also a TT event, but world champion Evenepoel came in third there, beaten by over a minute by his tour rivals Pogačar and Vingegaard. Usually TT events are won by seconds or milliseconds, so it was an extraordinary result.
Pogačar and Vingegaard both bowed out of this olympics entirely, claiming they were both exhausted by the toughness of the Tour de France this year. My hunch? They're both doping and the drug controls at the biggest commercial cycling event in the world aren't nearly as rigorous as the Olympics are these days (ignoring the 2014 Russia drug lab scandals). I think they skipped this because they didn't want to get caught using substances to recover after riding one of the toughest but fastest Tour de France races ever and putting in efforts no one has seen before.
Road race
Women's
I wanted to see Marianne Vos win this since she's a multiple time world champion of almost every form of cycling she attempts. Two-thirds of the way into the race, American Chloé Dygert crashed in a tight turn and that split the field. It left two groups out front of the rest, with Vos in the lead one. But American track specialist Kristen Faulkner was in the chasing group and they clawed their way back up to the lead group. Once together, I thought Faulkner would rest and draft until the finish sprint but she broke away from everyone with several kilometers to go. I didn't think she had a chance but she held her lead all the way to the end for a surprise win. Vos got silver and Lotte Kopecky nabbed bronze but was also a favorite since she's won every other major race in the past couple years.
Men's
There were several breakaways but it was cool to see the TT specialist Evenepoel in the front group for much of the race and then he attacked late and put his TT skills to work putting time into everyone. The final 5km were super exciting too, as he got a flat, jumped off his bike, yelled to his team car, and got a new bike swapped and back on the road in less than 30 seconds, which still let him finish a full minute ahead of second place. Bike changes are rarely that fast and I can't remember another time a leader flatted but still won in 40 years of watching races.
He even stopped at the finish line to take the photo shown above, which is a supreme flex in cycling, because you usually have a sprint finish with dozens of other riders around you. If you can get a finish line photo that is clear of anyone else all the way off into the horizon, it shows how much you dominated that day, and Evenepoel certainly enjoyed it.
The chasing group had an American in it, and it was looking like he could nab a bronze but fell back in the final sprint for a top ten finish.
Mountain Bike (cross country)
Many cross-country MTB racers are also stars in Cyclocross, the weird cycling sport I love (it's only big in Western Europe so will never get into the Winter Olympics). So I was mostly pulling for my cyclocrosser favorites.
Women's
I wanted to see Puck Pieterse win since she's such a dominant rider in World Cup cyclocross and MTB races (and she has a great YouTube channel), but she flatted and lost too much time to the leaders late in the race. It was great to see American Haley Batten nab second since the US has only gotten a bronze in past MTB olympic events. Pauline Ferrand-Prévot won it cleanly and I've watched her race well for the past decade so it was no surprise.
Men's
I really wanted to see Tom Pidcock win this one (or Mathieu van der Poel but he didn't enter after crashing hard at Tokyo last time and wanting to focus on the Olympic road race in Paris) and the last lap of the men's race was epic. Pidcock had to claw over a minute back from the leaders over the last half of the race after flatting, made it up to them, shook off everyone but a French guy, and they raced neck and neck for over a lap together.
Just before the end, they took two different paths around a tree then came together in a brief collision that put Tom out front. Pidcock then put in a huge effort as the frenchman was still trying to reclip into his pedals. Tom won as a result, but the French crowd was loudly booing him all the way into the finish as they felt he pushed the French silver medalist unfairly. I thought even though it was an aggressive move, it wasn't anything that broke the rules.
Track Cycling
Velodrome races start next week and I'm not a close follower of these events personally, but they're sometimes fun to watch.