Australian BMX rider Saya Sakakibara has defied injury and family trauma to claim Australia’s 10th gold medal in emotional scenes on Saturday morning.
Sakakibara’s brother Kai suffered a traumatic brain injury while racing, and Sakakibara has had two severe concussions which almost led her to quit the sport.
At the Tokyo Games in 2021, the Australian athlete suffered a severe concussion after colliding with another racer, ending her Olympic debut.
Kai, also a talented BMX racer, ranked 10th in the world in February 2020, while his sister was in the top five.
In the same month, Kai fell during a World Cup event and was placed in a medically induced coma for two months due to a traumatic brain injury.
This injury affected his speech and movement on the right side of his body, requiring him to relearn essential life skills.
She wore her brother’s No.77 for the ride and dominated the field to claim an emotional win.
Saya Sakakibara let’s all the emotion out after leading the final from beginning to end
An emotional Sakakibara wore her brother’s number and dedicated the win to him after Kai Sakakibara suffered life-altering brain trauma while riding
‘I feel it’s a dream – it is real, right?’ Sakakibara asked in disbelief.
‘I just visioned the moment, I visualised being on the podium, hearing the National Anthem and having the gold medal around my neck. I envisaged that.’
‘Every setback I had since the moment I was on, I thought I am going to give this another crack, I just had that in mind. I wanted it, I wanted it.
‘I knew it just comes down to like a split second and all I had to do was just f***ing go.’
Sakakibara said she spotted her brother in the crowd which only made her ambition burn even brighter in the coast-to-coast victory.
‘I saw Kai. I knew that either way I was going to end in tears,’ she said.
And the emotional rider revealed that she had battled through an additional secret setback after contracting COVID earlier in the week.
‘I thought, I can’t believe this. It’s certainly going to be an Olympic story,’ she said.
‘I just want the make sure it is a gold Olympic moment. Either way it is going to end in tears and I wanted to make sure they are happy tears.’
‘She said so many times all the fear she had to silence in her head, came back from concussions last year and the entire team, her coach there, everyone believed in her performance so much,’ Aussie dual Olympian and former world champion Caroline Buchanan said.
‘She stepped back up to the plate of BMX when everything told her, her brothers traumatic brain injury, and she said ‘I’m not going to let the fear break me’ and she is now an Olympic champion.’
Kai was on hand to watch the emotional victory that his sister dedicated to him.
‘I’m shaking,’ he said.
‘It’s crazy because three years ago she could have done it but she didn’t and now she is doing it. It’s crazy. It really is crazy.’
Shibasaki’s French boyfriend Romain Mahieu was at the finish line to congratulate her as she collapsed in tears. He had won the bronze medal in his final earlier that same day.
‘I knew she could do it. She has been working so hard, I am just so proud of her. It is everything she has deserves,’ he said.
‘She has been through everything, a hard time almost stopped racing and now she is showing how good she is. We are going to need some time to let it sink in and just understand what happened.’
Shibasaki’s French boyfriend Romain Mahieu congratulates her at the finish line
Sakakibara delivered an extraordinary performance of consistent brilliance, winning all three of her quarter-final heats on Thursday and all three of Friday’s semi-final races too, also producing the two fastest times in qualifying in the final.
But in the past, the double World Cup overall champion has occasionally buckled in the biggest one-off finals, as in the world championships in May when she was excellent in the preliminary rounds but bombed in the final.
She felt that loss was a timely ‘kick in the bum’ for the biggest test of all, and this time she was ready, roaring away at the start to reach the first tight corner first for her seventh consecutive race.
From there, no-one was going to catch her as she blitzed away on the 400m course to win in 34.231 seconds, way clear of her seven rivals.
Fiften minutes earlier, though, another Australian hope Izaac Kennedy had suffered a dramatic fall on the first corner of the men’s final.
Knowing he needed a blistering start to give himself any chance of winning a medal, the 23-year-old Gold Coast rider tried to dip down wide and swiftly on the first of the U-bends to get into contention, only to clip the side of the track and go tumbling at high speed.
Slumped in misery on the track, the good news was that he was able to struggle to his feet, remount and slowly make his way back to the finish.
France swept the men’s medals, with Joris Daudet winning ahead of Sylvain Andre.
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