THE majority of the Scottish sporting public may not have been overly-familiar with BMX before the Glasgow 2018 European Championships rolled into the city but their introduction to it could not have been more glorious.
GB won gold and silver in the men’s elite race at the newly-built Glasgow BMX Centre in Knightswood in thrilling style yesterday, with gold medallist Kyle Evans dominating the event from start to finish.
The Knightswood track, which had been specifically built for Glasgow 2018, had been described by the riders prior to the event as technically difficult rather than out and out fast. But for the sell-out crowd, many of whom were watching the sport at an elite level for the first time, the speed with which the riders negotiated one lap of the seemingly unpassable humps did little to convince them of this.
A number of crashes during the preliminary rounds illustrated just how precarious a sport this is, and how fine the margins are between emerging with victory or leaving empty-handed.
Evans is the sixth-ranked rider in the world but with the current world champion, Sylvain Andre from France, in the field, there were few who tipped the Englishman for gold. However, Evans looked the form rider going into the final and having grabbed the lead from the off, never relinquished first place in a frenetic but ultimately controlled ride.
This victory was the 24-year-old from Manchester’s first major championship win and while he had stated prior to these European Championships that gold was his target, he admitted he was both relieved and delighted to have executed such a performance when it really mattered.
“It was a bit of a whirlwind. I came into the event knowing I’d not left any stone unturned but you never know how things are going to go,” he said.
“You can never go into a race feeling really confident, especially with the class of riders that were here. So you really have to be firing on all cyclinders to do well and for me to do that in front of a home crowd was amazing.”
In an extraordinary - and entirely unanticipated - turn of events, Evans’ GB teammate Kye Whyte came through to take silver, with the 18-year-old pushing world champion Andre into bronze medal position.
Whyte had talked in the lead-up to this event of the tough time he has had to get to this point in his career, including having to struggle to escape the lifestyle many fall into in his home area of Peckham, South London, bleeding on the brain caused by a crash while racing and his subsequent withdrawal of funding, leaving him in the lurch when it came to pursuing his BMX career.
But the teenager was welcomed back into the GB fold last year and he admits that he cannot quite believe his progress.
“It’s been a long journey to get to this point,” he said.
“If someone had said to me a few years ago I’d be European silver medallist, I wouldn’t have believed it. And for it to be behind my teammate makes it even better.
“To get a silver at this age, in only my first year in elite - I wouldn’t have believed it. It’s really positive for the future too - hopefully it’ll bring more medals.
“I definitely feel like I’ve proven a point to people. There were some people who believed in me but I don’t think even they believed I could reach this level. I think people maybe thought that I could make the final here in Glasgow, but they expected I’d come last or somewhere like that. So to get second, it’s brilliant.”
In the women’s race, things went far more to plan with reigning world champion, Laura Smulders, taking gold ahead of Denmark’s Simone Tetsche and Russia’s Yaroslava Bondarenko, who took silver and bronze.
GB’s top rider, Bethany Shriever, crashed out in the semi-finals but the former world junior champion was understandably disappointed but was able to look at things philosophically.
“I’m glad to walk away from it not injured - that’s the main thing,” the 19-year-old said.
“I’m pretty gutted though. I just didn’t quite get the start I wanted but I didn’t back down and then I came together with another girl and that was it.
It is pretty disappointing but there’s going to be so many other races for me so I just need to take the positives from it and look forward to the next race.
"This is definitely just part of the sport - you’re going to crash. But I’d have loved to have gone through here, especially in front of a home crowd. But it’s just one of those things.”
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