Four years ago the International Olympic Committee added BMX Freestyle Cycling to its list of events. Now, four years and almost two months later Buchanan, Mich. native Hannah Roberts will make her Olympic debut.
It’s a long time coming for the 19-year-old, who has racked up accolades over the last few years. She is a three-time World Cup freestyle winner and three-time world champion. She was the first U.S. Olympic qualifier in BMX freestyle back in February of 2020 after a dominant year in 2019.
“It was, it was kind of unexpected because I thought it was gonna be a little bit later in the year, but it was awesome I was back home with my family in Michigan and got to celebrate with them, and yeah it’s pretty cool,” Roberts said.
The news of Roberts’ qualification came will before the May 12 cutoff when the USA Cycling rankings would be finalized. Shortly after she learned she’d qualified for the Olympics, FISE and the UCI canceled the World Cup event set to take place in Pu Yang, China last May.
In the weeks that followed, several other events were postponed until the IOC pushed the Olympics back to 2021.
With the increase in COVID cases over the last year, Roberts and her training partners set up individual guidelines to make sure they could practice. So for three months Roberts avoided going out in public and limited her travel between the skate park and her home in North Carolina.
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Roberts and her training partners were able to do workouts at a gym built at the skate park.
Traveling back and forth for training was the easy part. But mentally, it became exhausting. By following her personal COVID guidelines, Roberts didn’t ride as much with the local kids as she had in the past. The lack of interaction with new people became was mentally draining.
“It felt like I didn’t know anything else, which took a toll on my riding,” she said. “But the biggest things that I had to overcome was obviously the mental struggles of everything that happened and then, you know, injuries and luckily I came out on the other side and I’m still here, I’m still smiling and yeah, I’m excited.”
So when COVID restrictions were lifted, Roberts found it tough to get going again. To push through the mental fatigue she took a couple of weeks off her bike to go fishing with her then-girlfriend, now-wife, Kelsey.
For Roberts, the goal of the break was to find herself and fall in love with riding again. She thought about why she wanted to compete and why she was so focused on her dream.
“When you’re so obsessed with something, it starts to become you and that’s not exactly what I wanted to happen and I know that nobody wanted, to do that during quarantine but, obviously, unfortunately, we all did, and it took a while for us to get back on track as I guess as people and not just athletes,” she said.
Roberts did find her footing again. She began training again and last month won gold at the UCI Urban Cycling World Championships in Montpelier, France last month. She still has plenty more to give, too.
Beginning on Friday, July 30, Roberts will be among a field of nine women and nine men competing in the inaugural Olympic BMX freestyle competition in Tokyo. Each country represented has no more than two athletes per gender.
In BMX freestyle riders have 60 seconds to show off their best flips, skills, and tricks. They are then awarded points for originality, execution, and height. Roberts has a number of tricks up her sleeve including tailwhips, backflip bar spins over spines, 360° tuck no-handers and a lot more.
“Every trick has their difficulties,” she said. “My first trick was a tuck no hander and it took a while to learn that one. It felt like forever to learn that one. But every trick has their difficult moments and their trial and error times.
“Whenever you land a trick no matter what it is like you just get this big adrenaline rush and, kind of a relief that you rolled away from it. Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I love our sport is, is the adrenaline rush and just being able to outdo yourself each time.”
While she’ll be competing against herself, she obviously is competing for the gold medal with a group of riders who she hasn’t seen in over a year. Everyone didn’t have the chance to compete in France, so she is looking forward to competing against them and catching up.
With nine days until her Olympic debut, Roberts is focused on soaking up the experience and time she has with her fellow competitors. She may be a favorite to win the gold medal, but she’s tried to tune that out.
“Being named to the team and getting to go and represent my country is such a big accomplishment but I’m just going to soak it all in,” Roberts said. “You know the only goal that I have for myself is to support that with solid runs that I’m incredibly happy with. And, whatever I get from there, that’s all I can ask for.
“I haven’t seen what other the other women have been working on, so I don’t know exactly what they’re gonna come out with. But I’m excited to see it and I’m excited to put down a run that I can look back on and be like, ‘yeah that was, one of my best runs.’ Or, ‘I’m super stoked about this.’ I guess getting a medal is icing on the cake and it’s not something that I’ve been focused on at all, especially throughout this last year and a half.”
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