PARIS: First-time Olympians from Argentina and China took gold in the BMX Freestyle finals as a string of dramatic crashes knocked out the reigning medallists under a baking-hot Paris sun on Wednesday.
In his first Olympic games, Argentina's Jose Torres Gil, 29, shot off the ramp in his first run, flying higher and gyrating faster than all competitors, his 94.82 score remaining at the top of the scoreboard throughout the event.
"So much feeling, it's hard to explain. I am trying to endure the moment and not cry because I am a person who doesn't like to show his feelings too much," Torres Gil said.
China's Deng Yawen, 18, also a first-time Olympian, won the women's gold medal, the result of a decade-old drive by China to boost its medals count in sports the communist country has not previously dominated.
The jury awarded Yawen's first run a score of 92.60 for a series of high-flying tricks, including her trademark "double tailwhip", during which she kicks her legs back and forth as if cycling in the air while her bike spins around underneath her.
"After the first run, I was on top and that gave me more confidence to level up my performance in the second run," Yawen said.
Yawen and the other Chinese female rider, Sun Jiaqi, are both coached by Tokyo silver medallist Daniel Dhers of Venezuela, a BMX veteran who has trained a generation at his ride park in North Carolina, the United States.
Jiaqi also fell in her second run. The audience applauded her as she got back up, with a lone small Chinese flag waving in the stands overlooking Paris's Place de la Concorde, one-time home of the French Revolution's guillotine.
Perris Benegas took the women's silver — the second silver in the discipline for the US following Hannah Roberts's in Tokyo. Australia's Natalya Diehm won bronze.
The multiple crashes cost some of the favourites a podium place on Concorde, where Paris's oldest monument, the 3,000-year-old Luxor Obelisk, formed an impressive backdrop to one of the Olympics' youngest sports.
Defending men's champion Logan Martin of Australia, 30, who won gold in the inaugural BMX Freestyle competition in Tokyo in 2021, crashed twice, with one crash in the final seconds of a spectacular run that could have been worth a podium place but instead left the full-body tattooed father-of-two in last place.
Roberts also laid down an impressive routine but fell on her second run as she tried to outdo Deng, who already had top scores on the board.
With riders getting two one-minute rides and the best ride counting, athletes have an incentive to take more risk than in the qualifiers, where the two scores are averaged. But the finals brought gold to those who played it smooth as well as safe.
That did not stop Britain's Kieran Reilly, in his Olympic debut, from spinning his way to silver, starting his second run from the highest point of the ramp and stringing together a series of highly technical tricks that wowed the crowd.
France's Anthony Jeanjean, 26, who is top of the BMX Freestyle Park UCI World Cup rankings and was a favourite to take gold on home soil, also fell on his first run to the dismay of the home crowd. A fast and confident second run secured him bronze but Jeanjean said he was disappointed.
"I wasn't coming for bronze but for gold... I will take time to digest after this failure, because to me that's a failure," he said.
He did put things in perspective in the end.
"Concorde square, the Olympics in France with the public and a medal round my neck. It won't happen again so I enjoyed the moment," he said. — Reuters