Three years after Tokyo heartbreak, BMX racing star clinches gold

Three years ago, Saya Sakakibara was lying on a racing track. The Tokyo crash left her dreams of Olympic gold in tatters, but dreams weren’t the biggest concern right then. It was her head; she had been completely knocked out.

Not long before that, her brother Kai had also suffered a head injury during a crash, which almost killed him. It affected his ability to speak and move the right side of his body, and he had to train himself to do things he’d once taken for granted.

Sakakibara suffered the effects of her concussion for a long time: the headaches, the tiredness, the mood swings. Another concussion a year later left her questioning her future. It had all been too much. She decided she was done with BMX racing.

And then she changed her mind. There was unfinished business. She got back on the bike, worked hard, and rocketed up the rankings. By 2023, she was the top rider in the world. She still felt the fear, though, that it would happen again.

“It was only probably two months ago that we were here training, and she was really struggling to get around the track,” said her coach, Luke Madill. “The fear starts to build up in her. We’ve done a lot of work. I’m proud of her for pushing through.”

A case of COVID at the beginning of the week left her worried disaster would strike again. Her throat was burning. She missed a few training sessions. But she pushed herself through the preliminaries, knowing that if she had the inside lane, gold would follow.

She began Friday night’s race as the fastest qualifier. As soon as it began, the gold was hers. She knew it within seconds. It took everyone else half a minute of watching her completely outclass her opponents to realise it, too.

“It comes down to that split second,” she said. “It literally all comes down to that split second, whether you just go for it or you don’t.” Still, she was stunned immediately after the race. “I feel like it’s a dream,” she said. “It’s real, right?”

Saya Sakakibara celebrates her gold medal-winning performance.Credit: AP

Her big brother, who’d got her into the sport and been an Olympic gold medal chance himself before his accident, was in the stands. “He was watching the podium on the track, and when the national anthem played, I couldn’t stop the tears,” she said,

“It was super special that he was here.”

Skakibara’s partner, French rider Romain Mahieu, also won bronze on Friday night in the men’s final that preceded the women’s by minutes and led to a French trifecta that drew President Emmanuel Macron to the velodrome.

The couple made their relationship public six years ago and now divide their time between France and Australia. “I knew she could do it,” said Mahieu. “She’s been through everything, almost stopped racing, and now she’s just showing how good she is.

“So she did better than me, but I’ll take the medal. We’re just going to celebrate the whole journey. We just do everything together, 24/7 and when it works out for both of us, it’s just great. It’s a great feeling.”

While her brother Kai aims to row in the 2028 Paralympics, Sakakibara hopes her gold medal is the start of a dominant era. “There was so much hype for this one, but I know I just want to keep going,” she said.

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