August 20, 2008 (Beijing, China) – One year ago the UCI held a Supercross race as the ‘test’ event on the Laoshan BMX Track where the USA’s Donny Robinson and Great Britain’s Shanaze Reade won gold and the event gave all of the riders an opportunity to try out the Olympic track. Fast forward one year and BMX finally stepped onto the Olympic stage and although the track is the same, the riders have changed.

Qualification Time Trials
It was obvious at the start of time trials that on average, everyone was at least one second faster than last year. And that’s a huge difference when you consider average lap times are 36 seconds.

After two rounds of time trials, BC’s Scott Erwood was ranked 26th while Alberta’s Sam Cools was 13th on the women’s draw. USA’s Mike Day won the Men’s time trial while Anne-Caroline Chausson of France topped the women. Based on previous results, there has been little or no correlation between a rider’s time trial result and their final placing but the top three men are looking to change that statistic. Interesting to note that Reade of Great Britain, who is the heavy favorite to win the women’s event, crashed hard in her first time trial. She ran her second time trial and placed behind Chausson of France and looked somewhat cautious on her second run. Chausson has been the only woman to even get close to Reade in a race the past year.

Men’s Quarterfinals
The women transfer directly through to semifinals while the men suited up for three rounds of quarterfinals. Numerous crashes in the first turn dramatically changed the flow of the race and left several gold medal hopefuls injured and out of the competition. USA’s Mike Day, who won the US Olympic Trials proved that he is the real deal winning all three of his quarter finals.

Latvia’s Maris Strombergs and Australia’s Jared Graves took control of their quarter finals and have also emerged as the early favourites. BC’s Scott Erwood had a decent draw and had a great shot to move on to the semi finals. In his first quarterfinal, he clipped-out coming out of the gate but fought back for a 5th place finish.

Erwood had 5th pick for lane choice for the 2nd round and chose the outside lane. This may have been a costly mistake as he got stuck on the outside of turn one and was eventually eliminated from competition. He remained upbeat about the whole experience and can proudly say that he was a great ambassador for Canada and BMX.

The semifinal and main events have been postponed due to rain and have been rescheduled to Friday at 9am Beijing Time (9pm EST).

BMX Olympic Semifinals

Men’s Semi #1
– Mike Day, USA
– Marc Willers, NZL
– Donny Robinson, USA
– Sifiso Nhlapo, RSA
– Andres Jimenez, COL
– Arturs Matisons, LAT
– Raymon van der Biezen, NED
– Kyle Bennett, USA

Men’s Semi #2
– Jared Graves, AUS
– Cristian Becerine, ARG
– Roger Rinderknecht, SUI
– Rob van den Wildenburg, NED
– Manual de Vecchi, ITA
– Damien Godet, FRA
– Kamakazi, AUS
– Maris Strombergs, LAT

Women’s Semi #1
– Anne-Caroline Chausson, FRA
– Sarah Walker, NZL
– Gabriela Diaz, ARG
– Jana Horakova, CZE
– Jenny Fahndrich, SUI
– Amanda Sorensen, DEN
– Samantha Cools, CAN
– Liyun Ma, CHN

Women’s Semi #2
– Shanaze Reade, GBR
– Laetitia le Corguille, FRA
– Nicole Callisto, AUS
– Jill Kintner, USA
– Tanya Bailey, AUS
– Lieke Klaus, NED
– Marie Dutto, ARG
– Aniko Hodi, HUN