us olympic bmx rider brooke crain crashes, Cheesier than a sweating Roquefort, it is, none the less, the official slogan of these Olympics: ‘Inspire A Generation’. You cannot walk anywhere in London without seeing it splattered across a hoarding.The idea is that these Games will somehow drive millions of children away from the television and down to the nearest sports club. Well, there is one event at these Games where they don’t need to bother. And it kicked off yesterday.BMX cycling is a sport which works the other way round. Children and teenagers love it already. It’s old folk like me who need persuading. So will BMX inspire my generation? Watching yesterday’s bone-snapping, blood-stained opening round, I think I’d rather cuddle a pit bull. But it is rather gripping.You can see why Olympic BMX cycling has youth appeal. It has lots of thuddy music, thrills and spills, a skateboarding/surfing/snowboard vibe, a lot of ‘dude’ talk and, above all, it involves some spectacular crashes. Yesterday’s preliminaries saw a couple of corkers.
This was the seeding round, when riders race against the clock to work out who gets the plum positions today and tomorrow. From now on, they start racing against each other. But even when charging down an empty track, it’s dangerous stuff.Poor Brooke Crain, 19, only learned she was riding in America’s women’s BMX team on Monday. She was brought in to replace another girl who has just incurred a lacerated liver in training (you can injure pretty much everything in this sport).
Yesterday, Brooke was pelting down the snazzy new course which has gone up outside the VelodromeThe track is laid out like a sloping bar of Toblerone. You start down a 20-foot ramp to gather speed and then go flying over bump after bump of a 450-metre course.
Brooke was flying until the deceptively simple final stretch to the finish. Instead of taking off over another bump, she drove straight into it.
The entire 6,000 crowd grimaced en-masse, emitting a collective ‘Owww!’ as Brooke went head-and-chest-first in to the crest of the hillock while her bike flew over her head into the next dip. The medics realised that this was a severe case of winding and wounded pride rather than anything serious. They let her regain her composure rather than summon a stretcher.
The plucky young thing remounted her bike and crawled over the finish line to warm applause. There she remained, slouched over her handlebars for several minutes, refusing to talk to anyone.Worse was to come with the men. Latvia’s Edzus Treimanis was charging down exactly the same final stretch when he went over the handlebars and face-first into the crushed limestone.
Having crushed it a little more, he left a pool of blood on the pristine white surface. Eventually, he pulled off his helmet and the medics gave him a dressing to dab his wounds.
His bike had ended up way down the track. Clearly in shock, he staggered past it and an official had to carry it home for him.
This was a serious prang, even by BMX standards. Up in the stands, many of the Latvian fans were on their feet, hands over their eyes. This is a huge sport in little Latvia, which won a gold in the men’s event at the last Olympics.
None of this had the slightest effect on the audience’s enthusiasm. As far as the legion of young fans go, if you don’t have a few crashes, where’s the fun, dude?
Afterwards, I talked to half a dozen families with children ranging from teenagers to four-year-olds. For most of them, it had been a case of the children bringing the parents along rather than the other way round.Britain is in with a serious crack at gold in this event, courtesy of Shanaze Reade from Crewe. Yesterday, she ended up fifth in qualifying but did not wish to share her thoughts with the Press.
Britain’s men’s hopeful, Liam Phillips, came in a creditable twelfth out of 32. Afterwards, he spoke of the thrill of being cheered the whole way by a capacity crowd, which included Victoria Pendleton and other members of Britain’s track cycling team.
‘I’d seen other British athletes on TV talking about the noise but – Jeez!,’ he said. Just ten weeks ago, he broke his collarbone in another event. Yesterday, he had a contraption like an ox’s yoke over his shoulders. ‘It stops you breaking your neck,’ he laughed.This is easily the most accident-prone of the cycling events at these Games. And compared to the old codgers in the other two-wheeled disciplines, like Sir Chris Hoy, they are a young crew. Yesterday’s commentators singled out one Australian rider for being that rarest of creatures in this game – a Dad.
It explains why these riders do not merely accept the risks. They seem to relish them. ‘There will be crashes,’ said Liam, 23. ‘Hopefully I will not be on the receiving end of one but, hopefully that’s one of the things that attract general members of the public to the sport.’ Very true. Today, the racing starts in earnest – eight at a time, would you believe. It will, doubtless, be spectacular and messy.
I certainly won’t be inspired. But I’ll be watching.
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