LONDON — I said this before about cyclists hurling down the Alps during the Tour de France and now I’ll apply it double to BMX riders: These kids don’t need drug testing. They need drug counseling. They are absolutely crazy.
BMX is basically a demolition derby that goes downhill and your only protection is a helmet, leg pads and what little common sense you have left. It’s absolutely one of the most violent sports I’ve ever seen. I covered Thursday’s quarterfinals and Friday’s semifinals and more than half the runs had crashes.
These aren’t little sissy crashes like the Tour de France where guys slide along pavement. BMX riders face plant into the side of hills. Brazilian rider Squel Stein was hauled off on a spinal cart. My Kodak moment that best depicts BMX racing is tiny American Alise Post of Saint Cloud, Minn. In her last seifinal run Friday she lost momentum, didn’t get enough speed off a jump and landed face first.
She tried to get up but couldn’t. Then she started to crawl across the hill — slowly. After assistance came, she tried to walk and nearly collapsed again. She finally made it to the finish line. She suffered no injuries.
Meanwhile, her teammate, Arielle Martin, remained in a San Diego-area hospital recovering from a training crash that resulted in a lacerated kidney.
After the finals Friday, I shared a bus back to the Main Press Center with Australia’s silver medal winner Sam Willoughby, who was going to appear on Australian television. He told me the most difficult part of BMX is perfecting the jumps that put you on the downhill lip of the next hill. If you get too much momentum you’ll land on the flats with no momentum; if you go too slow you can land on the top of the hill and bounce off.
These people’s precision was remarkable and I’d get on the mat with a judo player before I tried BMX.
“Yes, it’s not the kind of thing you just get off your couch and do,” ? told me.