All eyes were on the Olympic BMX track this morning where several top mountain bikers were duking it out with BMX World Champions for Olympic glory.  

In the woman’s race the pre race favourite was British World Champion Shanaze Reade with French former Downhill great Anne-Caroline Chausson also heavily favoured.  As soon as the gate dropped it became apparent that this was to be the race as the two riders surged ahead of the rest of the field.  Carnage behind saw Walker of New Zealand (another pre-race favourite) crash but remount.  In the final turn, Reade pushed hard to try and overtake Chausson but clipped her wheel and crashed spectacularly to not only lose the race but a medal as well as the field went around her.  Jubilant Chausson was followed by silver medal winner and compatriot Laetitia le Corguille and American Jill Kintner for the Bronze.  Kintner is a former three time 4-cross Would Champion who took the year out from 26″ wheels to focus on BMX giving up her World Championship jersey in the process so to medal was particularly sweet for the American who was not afraid to show her emotion crossing the line.  For Reade it was one to chalk up to experience, the rider promising to do it all again in London 2012.

In the men’s race there was similar drama when favourite Jared Graves was brought down by a flying bike whilst jostling for the lead at the half way point.  Latvian World Champion Maris Strombergs took the Gold ahead of Mike Day and Donny Robinson of the USA but never looked in trouble.

The woman’s mountain bike race which was due to take place this morning has been delayed till tomorrow. They will now start at 10am with the men off at 3pm local time.  Torrential rain in Beijing had damaged the course and officials decided to delay the race in order to conserve damage to the track and repair water damaged parts.  Incidentally the track has been reworked considerably since the test event last year with many riders shocked by the technical nature of it now.  As pointed out by Irish Olympian Robin Seymour exclusively to Spoke.ie here, it is now one of the most technical courses he has ridden and that was before the rain.  The rain will have one advantage though, as the air quality should improve considerably.  BBC1 are covering the men’s race live from 8am tomorrow Saturday.

Results Olympic BMX.