Olympics: BMX

August 20/22 2008, Beijing

Report by Phil Ingham, Photos by Phil O'Connor

Latest News - Rain Stops Play

The finals of the Olympic BMX competiton have been postponed until the early hours of Friday morning, following heavy rain at the venue. We'll be bringing you full reports when it happens.

Women's Qualifying - Big Crash for Reade

BMX made its Olympic bow with a dramatic and action-packed first day of two day's of competition. With every rider going through two individually timed seeding runs to start with, the early action promised to be largely time based as the riders strove to record the fastest time over the spectacular Olympic course.

However, there was huge and unexpected drama as GB's Shanaze Reade, favourite for the women's title, crashed heavily on her first seeding run. She rocketed out of the gate in familiar style and looked thoroughly in control down the jumps of the first straight.

Shanaze survived a crash in qualifying

However, two third of the way round the first huge tarmac berm, just as she straightened up for the second straight, she lost her front wheel and went down heavily onher left hand side. She bounced up almost immediately , hopping and limping to a standstill, before re-mounting and cruising into the finish.

She looked a little shaken as she climbed off at the finish and gingerly inspected her left arm which had a large graze on the forearm. Re-examining the video of the crash, it's nhard to see what went wrong, she seemed to simply push a little too hard as she straightened the machine up.

With time to gather herself before her second timed run, Reade successfully refocused herself and produced a faultless run to qualify second behind Frenchwomen Anne-Caroline Chausson, who is expected to be her main rival for the title.

Smile on face, Shanaze gets down to business

And if Chausson was harbouring thoughts that she'd gained a psychological advantage on her young rival, some of the gloss will have been wiped off it as the vastly experienced Frenchwomen completely inexplicably mis-timed a jump at the start of the final straight in her second seeding run and ignominiously flipped over the bars as she nose-dived into the sandy track.

Perhaps it was the pressure of the event, but whatever the causes, to see the best two riders in the world both make big mistakes in the seeding runs certainly pepped up the first day of action. The women's competition now moves straight to the semi final stage in the early hours of Thursday morning.

After the dust had settled, Shanaze Reade spoke to the BBC and reflected on her crash:

"It doesn't do anything for your mental strength" she said, "but I just took it steady [in her second run]. That was just a lap to get back into it." On the crash itself, she said "I washed out. It was just one of those things. You've got to battle on if you want to win the gold. I was hurt a bit and dented pride, but tomorrow everything is going to come out of the bag!" And there was a final message to her family "Mum, I'm fine and safe!" In truth, she looked to have taken the whole thing in her stride. Crashing is part and parcel of BMX, even at the Olympics!

Men's Qualifying & Quarter Finals

In the men's competition, the seeding runs went largely without incident with Mike Day of the USA, Maris Stromberg of Latvia and Damien Godet of France the three fastest qualifiers. Liam Phillips of GB qualified 28th of the 32 riders.

Liam Phillips (65) in the thick of the action

Into the quarter finals and the riders were seeded into four groups of eight, with each group going through three ehats, the top four from each group going through to Thursday's semi-finals.

The first group was dominated by Mike Day of the USA, who had a perfect run of three wins. The first ehat saw Day pull clear down the first straight with the rest of the field virtually all getting tangled up in a series of crashes. The remaining two heats were relativelt clean affairs, with Day being joined in the Semis by New Zealander Marc Willers, the USA's Donny Robinson and Andres Jiminez of Columbia.

The second group saw the wins shared out between Nhlapo of South Africa, Matisons of Latvia and van der Beizen of the Netherlands, all of whom qualified for the semis. They will be joined by Kyle Bennet of the USA, who was injured in a huge first corner crash, initiated when van der Beizen slid out and which took down 5 riders.

Bennet required some track-side medical attention before he could roll into the finish. Liam Phillips looked smooth throughout, managing fifth in the first heat, but trailed off in the remaining heats and missed out on the semi spot he'd been hoping for. He also picked up a nasty shoulder injury in the final heat in the big crash. However, hopefully the experience will stand him in good stead for London 2012.

The first jump really sets the races up

The third group was dominated by Maris strombergs, the world champion, who won the first two heats. His third run wasn't so claen however and an awkward jump early on the second straight knocked his rear wheel sideways and robbed him of momentum and he rolled in only fifth, with Rob van den Wildenberg of the Nethrlands grabbing a win to ensure he progressed to the semis, alongside de Vecchi of Italy and Kamakazi of Australia.

The fourth group began in spectacular fashion with a huge pile-up in the first corner of their first heat. Jared Graves of Australia emerged from that to win and with another win and a second, qualified first ahead of Bercerine of Argentina, Rinderkneckt of Switzerland - who did well to recover from the first heat in which he was last after tangling with the crash - and Godet of France.

With the some stunning camera angles, classy slo-mo replays and great riding, BMX's first day in the Olympic limelight looked an outstanding success. The BBC's Clare Balding looked startled by what she'd seen and in an unguarded moment described it as 'well mental'. Roll on day two and semis and finals!