Saya Sakakibara collapsed in emotional glory after winning the women’s BMX final, letting out a torrent of tears on the back of her remarkable journey to the finish line.
The 24-year-old nearly quit the sport after a horror crash left her unconscious at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago but she powered to victory in the final to clinch Australia’s first gold in the sport at Paris.
Her brother Kai was also a BMX racer but suffered a traumatic brain injury when he crashed during a World Cup event in Australia in 2020. He was placed in a medically induced coma but survived and was one of the first to embrace his sister after her victory in Paris.
Saya’s boyfriend, French cyclist Romain Mahieu, who had won bronze in the men’s event a short time before her race, raced onto the track to celebrate with the Australian champion in one of the most emotional moments of the Olympics.
She dropped a couple of F-bombs during her post-race interview on Nine as the magnitude of the moment hit her.
“I honestly can’t believe it right now. It all feels like a blur. This whole day was a blur,” she said.
“As I rocked up today, it was six o’clock. I knew that it was going to end at 10pm and I was like, ‘I’m going to make these four hours the most proud I’ve ever been of myself.’
“Every hour that went by, I was like, ‘okay, these next three hours, I’m going to make sure I give it everything,’ and then once I was at the top of the hill, I was like, ‘lane one, I’m the most comfortable I’ve ever been.’ That’s all I’ve been writing this whole week.
“I knew it just comes down to a split second, and all I had to do was just f–king go, and I just f–ing went. I just didn’t want to leave her without giving it my …”
Sakakibara proceeded to burst into tears in a moment that surely melted the hearts of even the most hardened of Aussie sports fans.
???????????? SAYA SAKAKIBARA ????????????@Paris2024 Women’s #BMXRacing Olympic Champion!#Cycling #OlympicCycling #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/9KuF8UQvqF
— UCI BMX Racing (@UCI_BMX_Racing) August 2, 2024
There were more emotional scenes after the 24-year-old received her gold medal, as she was able to celebrate with her parents – mum is Japanese, dad is English – and with Kai, who was bursting with pride after going through such an incredible journey with his sister.
“It felt like I was getting the medal myself,” Kai said.
Saya couldn’t have agreed more.
“None of this would have happened without Kai pushing me to be the best I can be,” she said. “This is definitely for both of us.”
It was a flawless performance by Sakakibara at the BMX Stadium in Paris, winning all three of her quarter-final races and repeating the feat in the semi-finals.
Fellow Aussie Lauren Reynolds looked on track to join her in the final before suffering a heartbreaking crash in the third run of the semi-finals that knocked her out of the qualifying places.
But even she must have been cheering Sakakibara on as the Australian provided one of the best moments of the Paris Games so far.
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.
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.
“She said so many times, all the fear she had to silence in her head, came back from concussions last year and the entire team, her coach there, everyone believed in her performance so much,” Aussie BMX Olympian Caroline Buchanan said on Channel 9.
“She stepped back up to the plate of BMX when everything told her, her brother’s traumatic brain injury, and she said ‘I’m not going to let the fear break me.’
“And she is now an Olympic champion.”
Fifteen minutes before Sakakibara’s triumph, compatriot Izaac Kennedy 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.
The Roarhttps://https://ift.tt/zTvj8Lc of the Day: Horror crash, brother’s brain injury – it’s ‘just f–king go’ as Saya wins sweetest gold of all
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