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BMX National Championships Saturday

Posted March 28, 2008 at 03:19 PM by Michael J. Sedor

Section: Beijing 2008, Beijing News, Beijing Results, Culture/History, Design/Art/Culture, Olympic History, Events, Cycling/BMX, Columns/Blogs, Michael Sedor

It didn’t take long for the unconventional “action sports” like half-pipe snowboarding and snowboard-cross to become winter Olympics favorites outshining their more staid downhill skiing cousins. This year the first X-Games-worthy discipline will make its debut in the summer Olympics: BMX racing. What’s BMX racing? Imagine motocross except without the engine. BMX has the same dizzying hills, the same unforgiving dirt tracks, the same moguls, and the same excitement.

Legend has it that the sport was invented in the late 1960’s in Southern California with enterprising kids jumping their Schwinn Sting-Rays. Then in 1971 sub-culture-exposing filmmaker Bruce Brown shined a light on this burgeoning sport in his motorcycle documentary On Any Sunday just as he had in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s with his small-scale surfing films. BMX’s popularity surged. Soon after skateboarding would blossom in the same SoCal clime of its spiritual predecessors.

BMX, however, was the first of the three to make the Olympics and this Saturday begins its athletes quest for Beijing at the USA Cycling BMX National Championships. Dallas suburb DeSoto will play host at its Metroplex BMX, the world’s first covered BMX track. The results won’t necessarily decide America’s Olympians but they will be important; this USA Today snippet has a succinct summary of the byzantine process. In short, America’s top-ranked BMXers go. You achieve your ranking over the course of a few events. Winning helps greatly.

So if you’re in Dallas why not stop by and experience the adrenalin rush first hand. Racing begins at 11:00 a.m. In the meantime get to know some of the athletes and wet your BMX whistle with this EXPN.com interview with Beijing strivers Mike Day and Jill Kintner and this VeloNews preview of the event. 

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Tags: action sports, beijing, bmx, dallas, history, jill kintner, mike day, national championship, olympics, racing, skateboarding, surfing

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