BMX cycling

[TShame]

What category is BMX cycling? Its not road, mountain, track or cyclocross.


My question is can anyone substantiate it as a valid sport?
Adults on kids bikes and only a 30 second race.
Why not do five or ten laps?
Even the announcer said it is basically all luck and a good start, the losers could win the next race because its all so happenstance. Do BMX cyclists actually train or is it like bobsledding, where you just practice the start and learn the course?

 

[slowoldman]

Of course it's a valid sport. It's speed and bike handling. The men's 100m can be won/lost with a good start too.

 

[twothirds]

BMXers are great athletes. Try and match the cadences they reach and you'll see. A few of GB's trackies have come over from BMX. Also, they have been known to put up crazy high sprint wattages.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

It's definitely valid, for the reasons others listed. My chief complaint however, especially after watching this Olympic games, is that the rider who got through the first corner first won in every race but one. Men and women, every heat, every semifinal, and the finals. To me this means there's something wrong with the way the course is designed though, not the sport of BMX, and definitely not the riders.

 

[TShame]

It seems like a lot of money was spent to build the Olympic course for so short an event. I would take them much more seriously if they were on mountain bikes or if they didn't need a huge ramp to build their speed. (Imagine how that would effect kilo times in track)
As for their cadence...proves nothing. As to sprint wattage...hype. That's like saying a badmitten player could serve a tennis ball as hard as Nadal or Roddick.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

It's a valid sport, no doubt about it. But whether it's a valid Olympic sport, that's another question.

 

[The Hitch]

Well to expand this conversation of modern extreme sports and the summer games BBC had the Tomahawk Shaun White on yesterday to make a plea basically for the X games merging into the olympics for 2016 and all the presenters were saying how great it would be to see it (obviously suggests the message to support the initiative came down from up high)

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I would go so far as to say that anything that exists at the X Games or similar actually has no place whatsoever on an Olympic programme. That applies to the ski/snowboard half pipe as well.

 

[kielbasa]

I would go so far as to say that anything that exists at the X Games or similar actually has no place whatsoever on an Olympic programme. That applies to the ski/snowboard half pipe as well.

Oh darn! I was hoping for parkour to be an Olympic sport. They could build a little city with tightly packed buildings and parks, and nets, rails, and water obstacles. They could also use it for Ninja Warrior events. Think about it.

 

[stainlessguy1]

I would go so far as to say that anything that exists at the X Games or similar actually has no place whatsoever on an Olympic programme. That applies to the ski/snowboard half pipe as well.

+1 yes , and a lot of other games , that are proposed to become olympic sports , i think any time you have too walk from one hole to another and concentrate on your swing or better yet drive in a buggie from one hole to another , or if you can chew tabacco and spit it out , and wack a ball out of the park then walk around a short distance and stomp your foot on a cloth bag , is a game and not a sport . it should stay that way .

 

[stainlessguy1]

Quebec city

HERE is another good one , just wait till they think that people on ice skates and bad fitting hockey equiptment sent down an iced up road in old
Quebec City is a sport . Things people can do when they have had enough too drink . But its catching on . Mental cases from all over the world come and give it a try .

yip , we try all sorts of crazy things in Canada , one of my fav`s is getting scuba gear and diving in the fridget waters under the ice and finding the next ice fishing hut , slowing gathering all the empty beer bottles and sending them up back thru the hole and giving the fishermen a heart attack . it helps when your arm is dressed in a green hairy goo .

 

[stainlessguy1]

Oh darn! I was hoping for parkour to be an Olympic sport. They could build a little city with tightly packed buildings and parks, and nets, rails, and water obstacles. They could also use it for Ninja Warrior events. Think about it.

hey why stop there , why not bring back the earlier version of olympics before the greek games and start watching religious denominations being fed to the lions again . sort of like hunger games , which is hungrier , lions or other . and then p. mc wade , can stand thumbs up or thumbs down over the event .
Maybe in about 100 years in the future when the population is 20 billion and no food , it will come back .

 

[spalco]

Even the announcer said it is basically all luck and a good start, the losers could win the next race because its all so happenstance.

It's not all luck, if you watched the qualifying races and semis, it was obvious who the fastest riders are.

I was again very impressed with BMX at the Olympics, very entertaining, close competition, and yet not that predictable. There certainly is an element of chance (the New Zealander and the French guy with #2 were unlucky because of crashes imo), but that only makes it better imo.

Also Strombergs coming out of nowhere again, how did that happen? I totally didn't have him on the cards for gold in the final. Did he just take it easy in the early runs?

I enjoyed it a lot, and I'm glad it's part of the Olympics.

 

[SergeDeM]

You could turn it around and ask why are things like the Javelin throw or the triple jump Olympic sports? People only pick those up because they are olympic while on the flipside BMX (and MTB) is now olympic because so many people have picked it up. In my mind popularity should be the real decider on whether a sport is olympic instead of tradition.

And BMX is like any other high energy outburst sport with a short timespan. You can find a bunch of them in the olympics in canoeing, swimming, track and field and even track cycling. I'd go as far as saying that BMX at least has turns which gives it an added difficulty.

 

[Dundee]

BMX as a sport is quite sustainable and the riders that participate are just as valid an athlete as any at the Olympics. They train full time and most you see at the Olympics have professional contracts.

The issue I have however is the small participation numbers. Olympic events should be inclusive of all parts of the world. That is events in the Olympics should have athletes from around the world.

The Women’s BMX had 16 starters with representatives from only 11 countries, hardly representative of a world sport, and not that exciting as the top few women had easy rides through to the finals, even if they had a mishap. In the Olympics those are good odds at a medal for any country. Perhaps that is due to National Federations setting the bar too high for selection, perhaps the top end of the sport is only relevant to a small part of the world.

A valid and sustainable sport yes, an Olympic sport, not yet and not at the expense of events from traditional cycling disciplines.

 

[Parera]

Olympic events should be inclusive of all parts of the world. That is events in the Olympics should have athletes from around the world.

Sailing says hi.

 

[Parera]

Also, most guys who do serious BMX are probably fitter/faster than your typical Cat 2 herpderp roadie who spent $5000 on some Lightweight wheels.

 

[pedaling squares]

I watched BMX the other day. Yes, I was impressed with their bike handling skills and their ability to spin at a very high cadence. No, I don't think this is a sport worthy of inclusion in the Olympics. Trials riders and free-riders have even better bike handling skills, and those forms of cycling are not of Olympic calibre. 5-6 of the 8 races I saw involved about half of the field going down in a crash in the first corner or two. And that's just not a valid sport. When luck is of equal or more importance than skill, no thanks. It's a fantastic sport. For kids.

 

[simo1733]

BMX as a sport is quite sustainable and the riders that participate are just as valid an athlete as any at the Olympics. They train full time and most you see at the Olympics have professional contracts.

The issue I have however is the small participation numbers. Olympic events should be inclusive of all parts of the world. That is events in the Olympics should have athletes from around the world.

The Women’s BMX had 16 starters with representatives from only 11 countries, hardly representative of a world sport, and not that exciting as the top few women had easy rides through to the finals, even if they had a mishap. In the Olympics those are good odds at a medal for any country. Perhaps that is due to National Federations setting the bar too high for selection, perhaps the top end of the sport is only relevant to a small part of the world.

A valid and sustainable sport yes, an Olympic sport, not yet and not at the expense of events from traditional cycling disciplines.

11 nations out of 16 participants is pretty good isn't it? The low number of participants is because cycling is not allowed to increase it's total number of particpants.
The main problem I have is that they have to build an entirely new venue just for the sake of 2 gokd medals.

 

[Dundee]

The low number of participants is because cycling is not allowed to increase it's total number of participants.

Perhaps, but I am unsure about the rules. I thought it related more to the discipline type than all of Cycling. Example Rowing: you have the traditional races, now you have all sorts of different types of races, numbers of competitors must have increase exponentially. Those doing the 8’s for example are not the same who do the canoe races and these athletes are not the same that do the white water stuff.

The main problem I have is that they have to build an entirely new venue just for the sake of 2 gold medals.

Good point but only relevant if a host city did not have to build many buildings to host the Olympics. Is 70-80 mil to build a Velodrome value. What are there, 10 track medals, so 7-8 mil per medal. So the cost of a BMX Track (this one reported at 1.5mil I understand) shows value to the host nation at only 750k per medal/venue.

Sailing says hi

Agree there are many sports in the same category.

I guess my point was there are athletes who missed selection in some events because they may have been 0.01sec outside of the National Federations qualifying standard or finished 31st on the world ranking and you needed to be in the top 30, so rather than let them compete in the Olympic spirit, they leave them at home. My concern is whether it is the IOC or the National Sports Federations restricting the fields some sports are suffering from lack of competitors at these Olympics. Only 30 Women in the Cross Country MB is a disgrace for one of Cycling’s most popular World Wide disciplines.

Watching the Middle Eastern women athletes on the running track was what I consider Olympic spirit, a Country sending the best they have for an event even though they are not competitive.

 

[movingtarget]

I watched BMX the other day. Yes, I was impressed with their bike handling skills and their ability to spin at a very high cadence. No, I don't think this is a sport worthy of inclusion in the Olympics. Trials riders and free-riders have even better bike handling skills, and those forms of cycling are not of Olympic calibre. 5-6 of the 8 races I saw involved about half of the field going down in a crash in the first corner or two. And that's just not a valid sport. When luck is of equal or more importance than skill, no thanks. It's a fantastic sport. For kids.

The problem I have with it is that some of the traditional track cycling events had to be cut to make way for BMX. The men's individual pursuit at the olympics for a track cyclist is like winning on the Alpe for a road cyclist. It's an iconic event and should never have been cut. Good news : next Olympics is going to have golf and cricket and rugby sevens. So what will be cut now ? I totally agree with Liggett that BMX and mountain biking should not have been included at the expense of other events. Why couldn't they have started the track cycling earlier like some of the other qualifying events for other sports ?

 

[SergeDeM]

The issue I have however is the small participation numbers. Olympic events should be inclusive of all parts of the world. That is events in the Olympics should have athletes from around the world.

The Women’s BMX had 16 starters with representatives from only 11 countries, hardly representative of a world sport...

A valid and sustainable sport yes, an Olympic sport, not yet and not at the expense of events from traditional cycling disciplines.

Equestrian Individual Dressage: 18 starters from 10 countries.
I guess it depends on the sport federation. Canoeing for instance only allows one entry per country on each of it's medal events. This BTW is another issue, how can there be so many different medal events for canoeing(16), rowing(14) and shooting(15)? Are they really so deserving especially considering that usually the only difference between events is the type of boat or gun?

I watched BMX the other day. Yes, I was impressed with their bike handling skills and their ability to spin at a very high cadence. No, I don't think this is a sport worthy of inclusion in the Olympics. Trials riders and free-riders have even better bike handling skills, and those forms of cycling are not of Olympic calibre. 5-6 of the 8 races I saw involved about half of the field going down in a crash in the first corner or two. And that's just not a valid sport. When luck is of equal or more importance than skill, no thanks. It's a fantastic sport. For kids.

It's not luck if to be always in front and safe from the crashes. Call me crazy but I'd say that qualifies as skill. BMX is great for kids, yes. However many adults practice it as well. I think you'll find this happens in many sports, but probably not in the great olympic draw that is gymnastics. If BMX is not worthy of the Olympics because of the average age of the participants maybe we should rethink gymnastics as well.

11 nations out of 16 participants is pretty good isn't it? The low number of participants is because cycling is not allowed to increase it's total number of particpants.
The main problem I have is that they have to build an entirely new venue just for the sake of 2 gokd medals.

At least it was one -very cheap- venue. How much was spent in football? How many venues for only two medals? I realize those already existed but I bet the works done on them was loads more expensive than the BMX venue.

 

[simo1733]

Equestrian Individual Dressage: 18 starters from 10 countries.
I guess it depends on the sport federation. Canoeing for instance only allows one entry per country on each of it's medal events. This BTW is another issue, how can there be so many different medal events for canoeing(16), rowing(14) and shooting(15)? Are they really so deserving especially considering that usually the only difference between events is the type of boat or gun?


It's not luck if to be always in front and safe from the crashes. Call me crazy but I'd say that qualifies as skill. BMX is great for kids, yes. However many adults practice it as well. I think you'll find this happens in many sports, but probably not in the great olympic draw that is gymnastics. If BMX is not worthy of the Olympics because of the average age of the participants maybe we should rethink gymnastics as well.


At least it was one -very cheap- venue. How much was spent in football? How many venues for only two medals? I realize those already existed but I bet the works done on them was loads more expensive than the BMX venue.

I don't agree with you about the football.None of those stadiums needed upgrading for the Olympics, and whatever was spent is more than justified by the number of spectators who attended.
I take your point about the BMX track being relatively low cost.The facility will probably be well used after the games as well.

 

[SergeDeM]

I see. You're right. I chose a bad example but I'm glad we all agree that the BMX track is not expensive. BTW I saw on TV that Beckham was in attendance. I'd like to say that vouches for the sport's popularity.

 

[Waterloo Sunrise]

Sailing says hi.

4 times as many nations took part in sailing as there were total competitors in women's BMX.