London 2012 Games Maker: BMX-rated racing

Shanaze Reade in the lead of heat two.
That's as good as it got

After the unforgettable days in the pressure cooker of the velodrome, it was nice to move outside and onto the BMX competition. After the seeding runs on Wednesday, I had Thursday off so was back for the semi-finals and medal races.

As usual we had our briefing before heading to the mixed zone. It was agreed that we would split up between medals and broadcast/print areas. I was assigned getting both silver medalists in the print area.

This would provide its own problems. We would now have eight possible winners per final, meaning it was very hard to predict who would win what medal. The finals would also be run back-to-back meaning there was a possibility of both medalists coming through together.

After getting some quotes from David Herman (who failed to qualify for the final), I made my way into the scrum ready for the medal races. First up it was the women’s final. Shanaze Reade, Caroline Buchanan and Mariana Pajon had looked the most likely to do well based on the semi-final runs. Sadly, only one would live up to their reputation in the final.

When the race started both Reade and Buchanan seemed to get stuck in the start gate for a split second. That was enough to end their races. Then it was a bun-fight for silver and bronze with Pajon bossing things from the front.

As I had predicted following the test event last August, Sarah Walker of New Zealand made easy work of the third straight to take silver. Right, I thought, that’s my lady.

Whilst waiting for her to come through the mixed zone, I was so concentrated on getting Sarah that I didn’t make a note of who won silver in the men’s race. To compound the issue, the result had been taken off the big screen. After some deliberation, I realised that Sam Willoughby of Australia had won the silver.

Great, I thought, the Aussie hacks are at the other end of the mixed zone to the New Zealand ones. This was gonna take judgment, as well as eyes in the back of my head.



Sarah Walker chats to the press - and me!



Eventually Sarah Walker made it to us – I managed to get the mixed zone team member to hold my Dictaphone for me, saving me having to lean through a scrum of people. The slight issue now was that Sam Willoughby had walked through the mixed zone, past us and down to the Aussie press.

I had to make a judgment call. I decided that it was worth getting something of both rather than lots of Sarah, so hot-footed it down to get Sam’s quotes. Once I had both I ran back to the workroom to file the copy.

I was slightly disappointed that the team had lifted some quotes off of the broadcast interviews and filed them without waiting for mine. I think they could see I was disappointed so let me write them up and file them anyway.

And that was BMX done. I definitely preferred the test event – we were pretty much the only people in the mixed zone then and we had great fun chatting to the riders. This was very different.