PARIS (AP) — Hannah Roberts watched China’s Deng Yawen put together a brilliant run in the freestyle BMX competition at the Paris Olympics, and in the ultimate game of one-upmanship, the five-time world champion from the United States knew she had to go bigger.
She went plenty big. She just couldn’t finish.
Roberts wound up crashing on a front flip late in her first run Wednesday, and was only seconds into her second when she put her foot down on the landing. That left the heavy favorite out of the medals entirely, and left Deng on the top step of the podium along with silver medalist Perris Benegas of the U.S. and bronze medalist Natalya Diehm of Australia.
“It was just a lot mentally, a lot of pressure I put on myself,” said Roberts, who may have been feeling the effects of a hard crash in practice. “There’s a lot of things that can go wrong in a very short amount of time and today just wasn’t my day.”
Deng finished with a score of 92.60 points at the urban sports park built at Place de La Concorde. Benegas rose to the occasion after a fourth-place finish at the Tokyo Games to score 90.70. Diehm was a surprising third with 88.80.
The medal for Deng came after the Chinese team failed to qualify anyone for Tokyo. The result, coupled with the fact that China qualified three and had to leave one rider at home because of quota numbers, showed how far the nation has come.
“If you do every move well,” Deng said through a translator, “your final score can’t be bad.”
Charlotte Worthington of Britain, the defending champion, failed to qualify for the finals, ensuring a new Olympic gold medalist as the freestyle version of BMX made its second appearance at the Summer Games.
The medal round got off to an inauspicious start for Roberts, who was going over a jump during a warmup session when she collided with Czech rider Iveta Miculycova. The American seemed to grab at her right shoulder as she ran immediately off the course, leaving her yellow bike gleaming in the sun on the purple-hued flats.
One of her biggest rivals, Sun Jiaqi of China, looked as if they might put up a big number on her first run. But in the final seconds, she clipped her front tire on the spine and landed hard on her full-faced helmet, essentially scuttling that score.
She also crashed during a tailwhip on her second try, taking Sun out of the medal running.
It was her compatriot who set the standard on her first run. Deng opened with a big double tailwhip, threw down a no-handed backflip and peppered her ride with another tailwhip, a triple bar spin and a double bar spin. The cleanliness of her ride resulted in a score of 92.50 — which she bettered by a tenth on her second run — and put pressure on Roberts to respond.
Roberts was on her way to a medal-worthy run before trying the front flip, which went awry right from the start.
“No thought of holding back in my first run. I did the front flip in practice perfectly and when it came time to do it in the contest, I slipped my foot off the pedal before I even snapped,” she said, “and by that point it was too late.”
It wasn’t the last time the favored American would end up on the ground.
Instead, it was Benegas who carried the day for the U.S. She put together a solid first run of 83.40 points with some big air and bar spins, only to go even higher with a 360 into an X-up that carried her to the second step of the Olympic podium.
“It’s just the best run that counts, so there’s everything to win, nothing to lose,” Benegas said. “I just told myself, ‘Let’s go.’”
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