Saya Sakakibara has pedalled furiously to Olympic glory on her BMX, scorching over the bumps and hollows of the Paris track to race to a landmark gold medal.
Three years after Australia watched in horror as she was taken away on a stretcher following a crash at the Tokyo Games, the 24-year-old rider completed her emotional comeback at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines circuit on Saturday morning.
"I honestly can't believe it right now. It all feels like a blur. This whole day was a blur," she told Channel Nine after the race.
"As I rocked up today, it was six o'clock. I knew that it was going to end at 10pm and I was like, 'I'm going to make these four hours the most proud I've ever been of myself'.
"Every hour that went by, I was like, 'OK, these next three hours, I'm going to make sure I give it everything', and then once I was at the top of the hill, I was like, 'lane one, I'm the most comfortable I've ever been'. That's all I've been writing this whole week.
"I just knew I had it when the gate called. I smiled. I was like, 'all I have to do is go'.
"It is crazy. I feel that it's a dream. It is real, right?"
Watched by her family, including brother Kai who suffered a life-changing brain injury after a crash in a World Cup race in Bathurst in 2020, Sakakibara delivered the race of her life in the final to become the first Australian BMX racer to win Olympic gold.
"My family is here. Everything that I've been through in the last two to three years … this was what got me going. I can't talk, I'm sorry," she said fighting back tears.
"I just want to see my parents. I couldn't see them in the crowd. I knew that, either way, I was going to end in tears.
"From the start of this week, I had COVID and I thought, 'I can't believe this'.
"But I just wanted to make sure it is a gold Olympic moment.
"Either way, it was going to end in tears, and I wanted to make sure they are happy tears."
Her victory followed the first women's BMX freestyle medal for Australia, won by fellow Queenslander Natalya Diehm on Wednesday.
It is the second Australian cycling gold medal, following Grace Brown's win on day one in the road time trial. The last time Australian cycling won multiple gold medals at an Olympics was Athens in 2004.
Sakakibara delivered an extraordinary performance of consistent brilliance, winning all three of her quarter-final heats and all three of Saturday's semi-final races too, also producing the two fastest times in qualifying in the final.
But in the past, the double World Cup overall champion has occasionally buckled in the biggest one-off finals, as in the world championships in May when she was excellent in the preliminary rounds but bombed in the final.
She felt that loss was a timely "kick in the bum" for the biggest test of all, and this time she was ready, roaring away at the start to reach the first tight corner first for her seventh consecutive race.
From there, no-one was going to catch her as she blitzed away on the 400m course to win in 34.231 seconds, way clear of her seven rivals.
Fifteen minutes earlier, though, another Australian hope Izaac Kennedy had suffered a dramatic fall on the first corner of the men's final.
Loading...Knowing he needed a blistering start to give himself any chance of winning a medal, the 23-year-old Gold Coast rider tried to dip down wide and swiftly on the first of the U-bends to get into contention, only to clip the side of the track and go tumbling at high speed.
Slumped in misery on the track, the good news was that he was able to struggle to his feet, remount and slowly make his way back to the finish.
France swept the men's medals, with Joris Daudet winning ahead of Sylvain Andre.
Bronze medallist Romain Mahieu is Sakakibara's partner and they hugged after her gold medal win.
AAP/ABC
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