José Torres Gil won BMX park freestyle gold at the Paris Olympics.
Place de la Concorde, Paris CNN —
Triumph and tragedy are everywhere you look at the Olympics, and the men’s BMX park final on Wednesday had a surfeit of both.
For tragedy, see how the pre-competition favorites – Australia’s defending champion Logan Martin and France’s home favorite Anthony Jeanjean – were at various points left sprawled on the canvass following dramatic crashes, a brutal reminder of the sport’s do-or-die nature.
Martin crashed on both of his runs, his title defense wilting in the Paris heat, while Jeanjean recovered superbly on his second run to take a hard-earned bronze medal.
As for the triumph, take José Torres Gil, the Argentinian rider who won his country’s first individual gold medal in a cycling discipline with a stunning initial score of 94.82.
“I couldn’t understand it, total craziness, it brought tears to my eyes,” was how Torres Gil explained hearing that he would be crowned Olympic champion at the Place de la Concorde, the temporary home of the Urban Sports Park.
Great Britain’s Keiran Reilly took silver after packing trick after trick into his second run, hauling himself above Jeanjean with the final act of the competition. As he threw his bike across the boarded floor and dropped to his knees in exhaustion, you knew he had given all he could.
“It was probably the best final that we’ve ever seen on the international stage,” said Jeanjean, whose score of 93.76 was enough to win gold at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago.
The Frenchman received huge support throughout, both from fans packed inside the arena and those gathered on the outskirts, hoping to catch a glimpse of proceedings. But when he crashed out on the first trick of his first run – losing a shoe and gingerly getting back to his feet – the atmosphere in the stands instantly deflated.
Anthony Jeanjean crashes, then loses his shoe, in the BMX park final.
A rider is scored out of 100 based on the best of their two 60-second runs in an Olympic final, this the second time the freestyle format has appeared at the Games, and points are awarded based on several criteria, including the difficulty, variety, creativity and execution of their tricks.
It offered Jeanjean a chance at redemption later in the competition, and when he ended his majestic second run by fist-pumping the air, slapping the ground and thumping his thighs, you sensed that he thought the gold medal was his.
The crowd did, too, chanting Jeanjean’s name and flapping French tricolores in the air. Then came a second anti-climax as his score – just short of Torres Gil’s lead – appeared on the giant screen to a chorus of boos.
“I’m a bit disappointed, I wasn’t coming for the bronze but for gold,” said Jeanjean, who was looking for redemption after crashing in Tokyo. “That’s how it works, I gave everything. I fell on the first run, that’s not easy to continue for the second. People here are all very strong, we are nine riders and the nine can win.
“I am very happy to have this medal around my neck,” he added. “I will take time to digest after this failure because, to me, that’s a failure.”
From left to right, Kieran Reilly, José Torres Gil, and Anthony Jeanjean completed the BMX park podium.
After the pain of his initial crash, the bronze medal was earned through a combination of resilience and skill on the 26-year-old’s second run, which ended on a stunning double backflip.
“It’s not easy at all when you’ve been training day-in, day-out for a year and you fall on the first trick, the first run,” Jeanjean said. “I haven’t fallen at all, I haven’t fallen all week.
“I had to get back on my feet and stay focused for my second run … despite a couple of mistakes, I’m glad I was able to pull it out the bag and get the medal on the second run.”
Torres Gil’s gold medal was the first for a South American nation at these Games and, in his first Olympics, the 29-year-old added to the Pan American Games title he won last year.
He was unfancied going into the final having qualified in seventh place with an average score of 86.66. That was behind Reilly, who qualified first, and the American duo of Marcus Christopher and Justin Dowell in second and fourth.
Martin occupied the third qualifying spot and Jeanjean the fifth, but it was Torres Gil who rose to the occasion with a high-scoring first run, which would stand as the benchmark for most of the competition.
Perhaps, though, that is part and parcel of the Olympics: where the unexpected can happen and the unfancied can become eternal.
“The level was extraordinary,” he said in his press conference. “The best athletes of the planet were here in Paris. I competed against the best of the world and I felt incredible; I feel part of this incredible universe.”
