In a race that is chatagorized by chaos, the winner-take-all final always proves a thrilling moment. The French swept the men’s final while Aussie Saya Sakakibara won the women’s.
Men's final
The men’s final was a showdown between the trio of Frenchmen: Sylvain Andre, Romain Mahieu and Joris Daudet. They dominated end-to-end in the final. Daudet won gold with a time of 31.42. Andre finished 0.28 behind him, with Mahieu in third.
In a venue where they added seats to increase capacity, the crowd went nuts — as did the riders — in celebration.
It's the first podium sweep for France at a summer rendition of the Games since 1924 — the last time the Olympics were held in Paris.
Daudet earned his first medal in his fourth Olympics after her crashed or was involved in a minor collision in each of his previous Olympic appearances. Despite the French dominating BMX racing in recent decades — 50 gold medals at world championships since 1982 — they only had two medals in the Olympics since BMX racing's debut in 2008.
Mahieu, after the race, couldn't believe the sweep. "Not sure we realize it yet because we’ve been talking about doing it so much, and we wanted to make it happen so bad, that now we’ve made it happen it feels normal. I think we’re going to need some days to let it sink in, and actually realize what we did. Personally, with my girlfriend, to come home from the Olympics with two medals, I don’t know what to say."
Daudet added, “It’s amazing, a dream that came true. We deliver when it counted, we’re the big favorites and we were able to do that.”
American Cameron Wood finished fifth, 0.7 behind Daudet. New Zealand’s Izaac Kennedy had a good start, and looked to contend for a medal, but crashed on the first turn.
The race was contested in front of French President Emmanuel Macron, which Mahieu hope's raises the profile of the sport.
"Hopefully it puts BMX on the map and you talk about us a bit more because you can see how cool the sport is."
Women's final
The women’s final saw Australia's Saya Sakakibara win with a time of 34.23, after an extremely consistent Games where she won every race of the event. She was greeted at the finish line by her partner, Mahieu, who had just won bronze. It was a sweet moment after Sakakibara crashed in the semifinals in Tokyo and had to be stretchered off the course.
The Aussie was esctatic after the race, “It’s so crazy. I wanted this, I’ve earned this. I envisioned me on the podium, I envisioned winning from Lane 1, I envisioned just committing 100% and not leaving anything behind. I just wanted to make myself proud and I just went for it.”
Netherlands Manon Veenstra seemed shocked to win silver while Switzerland’s Zoe Claessens finished third for the bronze medal. Claessens' medal is the first medal in the event for Switzerland.
American Alise Willoughby had a good start, but a difficult first turn to drop her from second to fifth. She finished sixth.
After strong quarterfinal and semifinal races, defending Olympic champion Bethany Shriever finished eighth.
Men's semifinals
The French men dominated the semifinals; they won every heat.
It was an interesting semifinals for the American men. Kamren Larsen and Cameron Wood found themselves on the outside looking in, headed into the third run, in 9th and 10th place, respectively. After the fourth-place finish and a fifth-place finish, Wood finished second in his final semifinal run, his best place of the day and snuck into the finals in the seventh position.
Great Britain’s Kyle Whyte crashed in his second run and was stretchered off the track.
Women's semifinals
The women’s field played out as expected. The only hiccup was Willoughby’s seventh place finish in her second run, though it wasn’t enough to keep her out of the final eight as she rebounded with a third-place finish in her final heat.
Teammate Delany Vaughn didn’t do enough to make the final with a fourth and two sixth-place finishes, finishing 11th overall.
Defending Olympic champion Shriever won all her runs and Sakakibara also swept her heats.
In the end-of-an-era moment, the “Queen of BMX,” Mariana Pajon, didn’t advance. She finished ninth and, for the first time in four Olympic Games, she appear in the finals.