Courtesy of Arielle Martin
BMX makes it Olympic debut in Beijing
|
In exactly 100 days from now, the 28-year-old from Texas hopes to be walking in the Beijing opening ceremonies alongside the swimmers and gymnasts and track athletes who have long-defined the Games. Just as snowboarding changed the face of the winter Olympics, BMX riders are planning to inject their own extreme flavor into the summer events.
“Everyone has ridden BMX at some point in their life,” said Donny Robinson, ranked second in the U.S. behind Bennett. “But our form of BMX racing is obviously something much different. People are just going to be so astonished, and people are just going to be wanting more.”
For those of you who have ridden a BMX (an acronym for Bicycle Motocross), we’re not talking about jumping the six-inch curb on your neighborhood block when you were 7, or racing your buddy down the flat streets of suburban Illinois. The Olympic BMX course features a starting hill nearly three-stories high where eight riders, just inches from each other, propel themselves to speeds close to 40 mph, allowing them to jump up to 45 feet.
Going for gold ... and blood
“There’s nothing out there really like it,” said Arielle Martin, who is currently the top-ranked female rider in the U.S. “It’s guaranteed you’re going to see crashes (at the Olympics). There’s no way with that much on the line, people aren’t going to be going for blood.”
In her 22 years, Martin, like many of her competitors, has seen plenty of blood. She’s sustained a crushed liver, bruised her lungs, broken her back and a torn her ACL. In 2002, after fracturing her spine, doctors said she would never compete again. After just an eight-month hiatus, she was back on her bike. Nothing could stand in the way of her Olympic dream.
At one point, fearing her relationship was getting in the way of her training, Martin even broke up with the man she eventually married in 2007.
“The opportunity to represent my country in the biggest sports event in the world would be such an honor,” said Martin, whose husband is serving in Iraq while she trains for the opportunity to represent her country in Beijing. “I grew up watching it and I admired the athletes and saw the sacrifices they made. There’s something inside of me that wanted to do that.”
A total of 32 men and 16 women from around will get a shot to compete at Games. The men will have a quarterfinal, semifinal and final round; the women will have a semifinal and final. In each round, eight cyclists race head-to-head, down the three-story-high starting hills and and around on the dirt tracks littered with hills. The quarter and semifinals consist of three runs with the culmulative time from those three runs determining which four riders advance. The final is a single run with eight cyclists.
The U.S., as one of the top BMX powers, is poised to send the maximum number of athletes – three men and one or two women.
On the women's side, Martin’s biggest competition just might be her roommate, Jill Kintner.
Kintner, 26, left BMX to pursue a career as a professional mountain biker. But after it was announced BMX would be a sport in Beijing, Kintner said she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to become an Olympian and promote her sport to a worldwide audience.
“I can make a difference for the sport and really open people's eyes and see how it's a healthy, fun thing to do for everyone,” she said. “Kids can do it and adults can do it. And I'm preaching' about bike riding in general, you know?”
An extreme sport goes mainstream
Upon Kintners return to BMX, she quickly realized the sport had changed in the five years she’d been gone. The starting hill was bigger, the speed was faster. As the sport moved onto the Olympic spotlight, media interest had increased. So had the interest of sponsors, who brought new money to the sport and more resources to the athletes. In short, a sport that had existed on the fringe since its creation was beginning to see the benefits of moving into the mainstream.
At the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif., the USOC and USA Cycling recently built the only track in the world that is a near-exact replica to the one in Beijing. There, Kintner, Martin and their fellow Olympic hopefuls live and train together, benefiting from some of the top coaches, nutritionists and trainers in the country.
 |
|
Courtesy of Donny Robinson
Donny Robinson, a former gymnast, got his start in at age 6 when a friend took him to the track.
|
“The sport has changed quite a bit with the emergence of the Olympics,” Robinson said. But, he added, these are just the first of many changes to come. “Who knows what BMX is going to be in 10 years? Look at snowboarding, snow board cross -- look at what the Olympics did for all that stuff.”
Robinson is thrilled to be on the crest of the wave of change, and plans to do his part to show the world just why they should pay attention to BMX.
“The biggest accomplishment I can wish for in the Olympic Games for myself is just to have an amazing lap -- I make the final and that one lap, whatever happens, I just want it to be something that the whole world remembers,” he said. “I want it to be a victory for me, but something that keeps people on the edge of their seats.”
You can read up on BMX at NBCOlympic.com.