Paris 2024 Olympic Games: How does BMX freestyle work? Where is the event venue? What date does the final take place?
Updated 31/07/2024 at 17:55 GMT+1
The BMX freestyle event bears witness to some of the most creative and adrenaline-fuelled action of the Summer Olympics as the world’s best riders combine bike-handling skills and gymnastic abilities to land spins, flips and tricks aboard their scaled-down bicycles. From run requirements to judging criteria, here’s how the gold medals will be decided at La Concorde urban park on July 31.
Team GB's Reilly delivers ‘high-flying, electric’ run to seal BMX freestyle silver
Video credit: TNT Sports
BMX Freestyle is one of the most exciting and engaging competitions in the whole of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
The sport combines high-octane speeds with mind-bending tricks as athletes spin, flip and tailwhip their way around a specially designed park.
With a sport that requires amazing skill and precision, the difference between a gold medal-winning performance and failure can often be a matter of millimetres.
Introduced at Tokyo 2020, BMX freestyle will be making its second appearance at the Games in the French capital.
The contest will take place at La Concorde urban park – Paris’ largest public square transformed into a temporary venue and a fitting setting for BMX freestyle and other urban sports such as 3x3 basketball, breaking and skateboarding.
Unlike other cycling disciplines at the Olympic Games though, BMX freestyle isn’t about being the fastest. Instead, competitors are pitted against each other to express their creativity aboard their bikes on La Concorde urban park’s specially made BMX freestyle park.
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The under construction BMX park (foreground) for the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympics, at La Concorde Urban Parc site in Paris
Image credit: Getty Images
The BMX freestyle park is 15m wide and 25m long, and athletes can expect a course packed with quarter pipes, spines (two quarter pipes positioned back-to-back), walls and box jumps.
How does the competition format work?
A total of 24 riders will be competing at Paris 2024 (12 men and 12 women). All were in action on Tuesday, July 30 in the men's and women's park qualification, with the final six in each event moving on to the final on Wednesday, July 31.
In both the qualifiers and finals, competitors have two 60-second runs each on the course to complete and land a variety of tricks.
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Charlotte Worthington won Olympic BMX freestyle gold at Tokyo 2020
Image credit: Getty Images
Each run is scored out of 100 by a panel of judges, who award points based on difficulty, creativity, style, originality, height of their jumps and delivery of tricks.
The highest single score across both runs secures the gold medal, essentially giving competitors two attempts at completing a competition-winning run.
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Common tricks see riders perform flips (both back and front), spins, tailwhips (where the frame is spun in one complete rotation) and gravity-defying holds like superman, but landing new tricks is one of the best ways of getting the judge’s attention.
Great Britain’s Charlotte Worthington won gold at Tokyo 2020 after becoming the first woman to land a 360 backflip in competition, while the field is packed with athletes such as Great Britain’s Kieran Reilly, who himself landed the world’s first triple flair (three backflips and a 180 rotation), albeit not in a competition.
discovery+ is the streaming home of the Olympic Games, and the only place you can watch every moment of Paris 2024 this summer
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