Australia’s BMX gun Saya Sakakibara has stunned Paris 2024 with an amazing return to the Olympic stage.
Not only that, she did it with the ghosts of the past still haunting her and a fresh health issue that interrupted her preparation.
Following the Tokyo Games where she crashed and was carried away in a stretcher, the 24-year-old wowed in her Olympics return with three clinical victories to power into the semi-finals as the top qualifier.
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Her amazing feat has suddenly made her the gold medal favourite … but it certainly wasn’t easy.
“It’s good. I think this week was a lot of emotions, I was sick, and I finally missed the training session because I was sick,” she told Channel 9 after the ride.
“When I came back I wasn’t feeling my best. Not feeling it. But once I got up there and the crowd, the atmosphere, that got me in the zone.
“I was really counting on that to get the best out of me. Once I got that first one out of the way I was like, ‘yeah I can do this’, I just needed to repeat it two more times.”
The double World Cup champion now has an extra layer of pressure upon her, but she is perfectly happy to carry that burden after her consummate quarter-final wins.
Asked if her rivals will see her as the athlete to beat, Sakakibara said: “I hope so.
“I like the pressure, the attention. I like the the cameras on me, I like people cheering for me and I just I wish there were more people. It puts a really big smile on my face.”
Sakakibara is hoping to banish wretched memories of her first Olympics in Tokyo when she suffered a horror crash in the semi-final that saw her taken away on a stretcher and left her with longer-term concussion problems.
But after some soul-searching about whether to continue her career, she’s returned to action mentally and physically stronger to become the world’s stand-out racer.
She looked every inch the racer to beat after setting three of the four fastest times on the spectacular, 410m bumps-and-hollows course where riders power off down a steep eight-metre hill and hit speeds of between 40 to 60kph.
“It’s always really good to come out and do the fastest lap. I think that gives me good confidence, and it also shows the other riders I’m in here and I’m gonna give it my best,” Sakakibara said.
Britain’s reigning champion Beth Shriever, who set the second quickest time and also enjoyed three wins, looks set to be Sakakibara’s major rival when the semi-finals and gold-medal final are run on Friday.
In the men’s event, fellow Gold Coast racer Izaac Kennedy appears a serious live contender for the men’s gold too.
He improved race by race on Thursday, starting with a fifth-place finish, then a runner’s up spot on his next run and finally demonstrating the sort of form that’s made him the overall BMX Supercross World Cup winner as he took the final race.
The 23-year-old Kennedy, who’s making his Olympic debut, qualified sixth overall, with three French riders, headed by Sylvain Andre, leading the way much to the delight of the partying home crowd.
Sakakibara will also have an experienced teammate alongside her in the semi-finals after three-time Olympian Lauren Reynolds, who finished fifth in Tokyo, qualified ninth, after coming home fourth, third and third behind her flying teammate.
– With AAP