BEIJING: When Mike Day first climbed aboard a BMX bike as a grade schooler in Santa Clarita, Calif., he hoped the bike would simply get him around the track.
Yesterday, it carried him to the medal platform at the Beijing Games, with Day claiming silver and teammate Donny Robinson winning the bronze behind Maris Strombergs of Latvia in the first Olympic BMX competition.
Jill Kintner of Seattle won bronze in the women’s final. Kintner, well back in the pack for most of the race, was helped by a last-turn crash that cost reigning world champion Shanaze Reade of Britain a medal.
Day, who has won only one major international event in his BMX career, appeared the rider to beat after Wednesday’s qualifying races, in which he posted the quickest lap in the time trials and never trailed in his three qualifying heat races. Although the semifinals and finals were delayed a day by rain, Day picked up right where he left off Friday, leading wire-to-wire in his first two semifinals.
Then he appeared to tire, fading to third in his final semifinal and never finding the front of the pack in the final.
Robinson, of Napa, Calif., got off to a slow start in qualifying and barely made it to the second day of competition. But he was almost as good as Day after he got there, finishing second to his teammate in the first two semifinals, then surviving a solo crash in the third to advance to the eight-rider final, where he again rode off Day’s back wheel to finish third.
Kyle Bennett of Conroe, Texas, USA Cycling’s top-ranked BMX rider in 2008, wasn’t so lucky. He turned in a gutsy performance just by climbing to the top of the 3 1/2-story starting gate with a shoulder dislocated in a Turn 2 crash in his final qualifying heat Wednesday.
But that couldn’t get him through to the final. Bennett, who didn’t use the injury as an excuse, admitted it kept him from pushing hard at the start, usually his strongest part of the race. But it didn’t keep him from steering.
He narrowly avoided a nasty three-bike spill in the same spot in his first semifinal and rode around a wreck in his last race.
But just four riders from each eight-man heat advanced to the final and with all three US riders grouped together, Bennett had trouble catching Day and Robinson. So when the points from the three semifinals were tallied he was a non-qualifying sixth.
Kintner, the only US rider in the women’s competition, finished third in all three of her semifinal races to advance to the women’s final.
Although the track was covered by plastic and treated with soil tack, which helps in drainage and improves grip, the 390-meter layout (370 meters for the women) was dotted with wet spots.
And though crashes marred virtually every race — with several of the wrecks involving multiple riders — most appeared to be the result of aggressive racing and not a slick surface.
One of the semifinal crashes nearly kept Reade out of the eight-woman final, where a second crash would ultimately undo her medal hopes.
Reade got out of the gate strongly in the medal race and led the first half of the race before being passed by Anne-Caroline Chausson of France.
But Reade, who had second place wrapped up, refused to settle for the silver. She fought back and was mounting a final charge heading into the last turn when her front wheel clipped the back of Chausson’s bike, sending her to the asphalt as France’s Laetitia le Corguille swept by to finish second while Kintner claimed the bronze.
Despite the fact yesterday’s races had to be rescheduled because of rain, the 4,000-seat grandstands at the Laoshan Cycling Complex, about 15 miles from central Beijing, were nearly full.
