Alise Willoughby remembers where she was when the phone rang. She had just returned home to Minnesota to take part in a charity event, and the best BMX racer of her generation was on her way to Target Field, where she was supposed to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before a Twins game.
Her husband, Sam, was supposed to be on the trip, too. But after missing out on a medal at the Rio Olympics three weeks earlier, he decided to stay in California, and begin working to rectify the situation at the Tokyo Games.
It was on a seemingly benign portion of the BMX track in Chula Vista, where the couple had trained for years, that the future they both imagined changed in a blink. Sam was warming up over the rhythm section, a mellow stretch of rolling humps, when the Australian fell backward out of a wheelie, landing on the top of his head. He lay there motionless as the father of a junior rider, who happened to be an EMT, rushed over and began giving him a head-to-toe examination.
The innocent crash had unimaginable repercussions. Paramedics canceled the inbound ambulance in favor of a helicopter, which whisked him to San Diego, where surgeons delivered the news: He had broken his back. He was paralyzed.
“It was such a fluke,” said Alise Willoughby, who eight years later is among the favorites to win gold at the Paris Olympics next month. “It was a little routine thing. Then he made a mistake on something he did every day for 10 years prior, you know? So it’s like, things sometimes just happen.”
They happen more in BMX racing than perhaps any other Olympic sport.
And it begs the question: Why do riders do it?
The answer seems to be different for everyone. Alise Willoughby is pushed by a burning desire to win Olympic gold, which she has missed out on in three straight Summer Games. Cameron Wood, who will be making his Olympic debut in Paris, is driven by the competition, to see where he stacks up.
They know the risks. They understand them. Everyone in the sport does.
But they also believe they are outweighed by the rewards.
“You can hate something and you can blame it, but at the same time, we obviously love what we do, and it’s our livelihood,” Alise Willoughby said. “Sam and I met through it. It’s given as much as it’s taken. So it’s just — it’s just people who love the sport.”
The beauty and the barbary
BMX racing is often described as NASCAR on two wheels, only stock car racing is probably safer. The discipline, which was added to the Olympic program in 2008 in Beijing, involves eight riders at a time flying out of a starting gate, elbow-to-elbow down a steep ramp, and into a course filled with sharp, banked corners, rhythmic bumps and high-speed straightaways.
Races take all of 40 seconds. Crashes happen. They are frequent, in fact, and injuries happen. Devastating ones.
They are expected, too. During the BMX competition three years ago at the Tokyo Games, five teams of medics surrounded the course at Ariake Urban Sports Park. Three ambulances waited nearby, ready to speed to the nearest hospital.
They were busy.
