China's Deng Yawen (center) poses on Wednesday with silver medalist Perris Benegas (right) of the United States and bronze medalist Natalya Diehm of Australia, during the medal ceremony for the cycling BMX freestyle women's park final at the Paris Olympic Games. (Photo by Wei Xiaohao/China Daily)
China justified its status as the 'bicycle kingdom' with a historic Olympic gold medal in the women's freestyle BMX park competition on Wednesday.
Competing in elite sports can often involve athletes defying the pull of gravity, and few people have done it in quite such dazzlingly complicated fashion as Deng Yawen.
Pulling off a range of bar spins, high-flying flips and then the killer trick of double tail whips – twice – the 18-year-old, who was second placed in qualifying, had the crowd at the Place de la Concorde in the heart of Paris gasping as she executed her second run almost flawlessly, to score a field-high 92.6 points and finish on top of the podium.
It was China's first Olympic gold medal in the young, urban sport, which only made its Games debut at Tokyo 2020, and its third across all cycling disciplines, to go with the two golds in the women's track cycling team sprint, won at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.
Beaming with pride, in her post-final interview, Deng thanked her coaches and association officials for their support, and also thanked her younger self for making a bold decision seven years ago.
"Looking back and regardless of what the future holds, definitely it was the best decision in my life," said Deng, a junior track and field athlete who chose to join the newly-built Chinese BMX freestyle program in 2017.
"As uncertainly risky as it looked back then, it has paved way to where I am now. And I really appreciate myself for making that bold switch at that time and all the hard work has paid off," said the athlete from Southwest China's Sichuan province.
Perris Benegas of the United States took the silver medal with 90.7 points from her second run, while Australian rider Natalya Diehm won bronze for her 88.8-point first run.
The freestyle event in BMX park, which is short for bicycle motocross, involves athletes riding across a park course set up with jumps, ramps and rails to perform wheel spins, flips, tail whips, among other tricks, within a 60-second timeframe on each run.
The Olympic final features the top eight from qualification rounds and ranks riders by each of their best runs out of two attempts.
Deng set the tone scoring an impressive 92.5 in her first run, building an early lead in the field, yet had to deliver under pressure in her second, after Benegas scored 90.7 points in her second run to close the gap, and Deng's teammate Sun Jiaqi fell on her both runs.
But Deng rose to the occasion, holding her nerve on her second attempt to improve her score to 92.6 points, securing the gold medal amid rousing cheers at the iconic Parisian square.
Deng's breakthrough, following a gold medal won by Chen Yuxi and Quan Hongchan in women's synchronized 10m platform diving on Wednesday morning, has lifted the whole Chinese delegation and kept it pumped up for more success to come in Paris.
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