BMX riders chase Olympic dream
CHULA VISTA -- Growing up in Conroe, Texas, Kyle Bennett used to pedal his bike over to the local BMX track to test his already prodigious talent on a course he shared with kids who still needed training wheels and older folks on touring bikes.
It was like forcing Tiger Woods to hone his skills on a miniature golf course or asking Michael Phelps to work out in a wading pool.
"Tracks are built for 5-year-olds all the way to 50-year-olds," he said.
Which leaves little room for elite riders like Bennett, who race at more than 40 mph and make jumps of more than 40 feet on their 35-second sprints around a snaking layout.
So when U.S. BMX riders stepped up from the domestic National Bicycle League or American Bicycle Assn. to race in international supercross events, it was a difficult transition.
"We were basically winging it," said Bennett, a three-time BMX world champion who has already clinched a berth on the U.S. Olympic BMX team. "We weren't used to it."
To remedy that, the U.S. Olympic Committee has sunk more than half a million dollars over the last seven months into a modern BMX supercross complex at the USOC training center here. The track, one of three permanent supercross facilities in the world, will make its competitive debut today with seven riders battling for the two remaining spots on the Beijing Olympic team.
And the facility, with its 29-foot start tower, has already made a difference in preparing U.S. riders for the first BMX event in Olympic history.
"We would go to these supercross events and the only time we'd have to ride the track is in practice," said Mike Day of Santa Clarita, the top-ranked North American BMX rider of 2007. "So it's been kind of nice being able to figure out and just get used to that speed. Because you don't really feel that speed anywhere else.
"Not only is it one of the best tracks ever but that starting hill, it's the only one in the whole country that we have to train on."
Standard BMX tracks commonly have a dirt starting ramp about 10 feet high with a slope of around 18 degrees. But supercross races start atop a tower nearly three times as high with a slope of about 28 degrees -- a huge and dangerous difference when you're racing down it at breakneck speed, elbow-to-elbow with seven other riders.
"It's a rush," Bennett said. "I don't care how many times you get on it and get used to it. Every time I get on it I get butterflies in my stomach. You're just going fast right off the bat."
