First-time Olympians from Argentina and China took gold in the BMX Freestyle finals as a series of dramatic falls knocked out the defending medalists in the scorching Paris sun.
In his first Olympics, 29-year-old Argentine José Torres Gil rocketed off the ramp in his first race, flying higher and spinning faster than all competitors, with his score of 94.82 remaining at the top of the leaderboard throughout the entire season. Wednesday event.
“So much feeling that it is difficult to explain. I’m trying to endure the moment and not cry because I’m a person who doesn’t really like to show their feelings”, Torres Gil told journalists.
China’s Deng Yawen, 18, also a first-time Olympian, won the women’s gold medal, the result of a decade-long effort by China to increase its medal tally in sports the communist country did not previously dominate.
The jury awarded Deng’s first run a score of 92.60 for a series of high-flying maneuvers, including her trademark “double whip,” during which she swings her legs back and forth as if she were riding a bicycle. in the air as her bike spins beneath her.
“After the first lap, I was on top and that gave me more confidence to improve my performance in the second lap,” said Deng.
Deng and the other Chinese cyclist, Sun Jiaqi, are coached by Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games silver medalist Daniel Dhers of Venezuela, a BMX veteran who trained a generation at his race park in North Carolina in the United States .
Sun also crashed in his second race. The audience applauded her as she stood, a small Chinese flag fluttering in the stands overlooking the Place de la Concorde in Paris, the former home of the guillotine of the French Revolution.
Perris Benegas took women’s silver – the second silver in the discipline for the USA after Hannah Roberts in Tokyo. Australian Natalya Diehm won bronze.
Favorites fail
The multiple accidents cost some of the favorites a place on the podium at Concorde, where Paris’ oldest monument, the 3,000-year-old Luxor Obelisk, formed a stunning backdrop for one of the youngest sports at the Olympics.
Defending men’s champion Logan Martin of Australia, 30, who won gold in the inaugural BMX Freestyle competition in Tokyo, crashed twice, with a crash in the final seconds of a spectacular race that could have earned him a podium spot, but instead left the total. father of two with tattoos on his body in last place.
Roberts also set an impressive routine, but fell in the second run while trying to overtake Deng, who already had the best scores on the board.
With competitors doing two one-minute races and counting the best race, athletes have an incentive to take more risks than in the heats, where the two scores are averaged. But the finals brought gold to those who played calmly and safely.
That didn’t stop Britain’s Kieran Reilly, making his Olympic debut, from spinning his way to silver, starting his second run at the highest point of the ramp and performing a series of highly technical maneuvers that impressed the crowd.
Frenchman Anthony Jeanjean, 26, who is top of the UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup rankings and was the favorite to take gold at home, also crashed in his first race, much to the dismay of the home crowd. A fast and confident second lap secured him bronze, but Jeanjean said he was disappointed.
“I wasn’t coming for the bronze, but for the gold… It’s going to take me some time to digest this failure, because for me this is a failure,” he said.
He put things into perspective at the end.
“Place Concorde, Olympics in France with an audience and a medal around their neck. It won’t happen again, so I took advantage of the moment,” he said.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
