BMX medal haul vindicates BC focus shift

Performance director Stephen Parks tells Vern Pitt diversification key to future

- Vern Pitt

Spin to win

Great Britain’s Charlotte Worthington nails her Olympic gold medal-winning jump in her second round ride at the Ariake sports park in Tokyo. Worthington’s BMX freestyle victory earned GB its third cycling gold before the track racing had even started. Her success is a product of well-placed funding. A full-time chef a few years ago, Worthington benefited not only from a funded place on the British team, she had use of a replica track built in a warehouse in Telford courtesy of multiple funding partners.

As Beth Shriever crossed the line to win BMX gold in Tokyo it marked not just the end of a rollercoaster five years for her personally but a vindication of a new broader direction that has been taken at British Cycling in the last four years.

Shriever’s victory had been preceded by a silver medal for Kye Whyte on the same course, just days after Tom Pidcock claimed mountain bike gold. It would be followed two days later by Charlotte Worthington winning gold in the BMX freestyle park and Declan Brooks claiming bronze in the men’s event. Britain has never won an Olympic medal in mountain biking or BMX since their introduction in 1996 and 2008 respectively.

No story demonstrates that transition like Shriever’s. Subsistence funding for the women’s BMX programme that she was on was cut by UK Sport after 2016 was the latest in multiple medal-less cycles. While she continued to receive BC coaching, travel and support at races, she didn’t have the grant to live off anymore and went to work as a teaching assistant and crowdfunded to keep her BMX dream alive.