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In the coolest new Olympic sport, Canada has pinned its medal hopes on an athlete with the perfect name to get the job done.
Samantha Cools, a 22-year-old BMX racing prodigy from Airdrie, Alta., has the skill and moxie in a 5-foot-2 frame to be on the podium when her sport makes its Olympic debut in Beijing.
"It's been a long road and it's been a big accomplishment just to get where I am right now," Cools said by telephone from Aigle, Switzerland, where she has been training since November on a replica of the gravity-defying Olympic BMX course. "It's pretty exciting, and it'll be in the record books forever, so that's pretty cool."
BMX, short for bicycle motocross, is a long way from the cycling events held at the first Olympics, in Athens in 1896. But it is part of the International Olympic Committee's bid to attract younger audiences to the Games with exciting new and extreme sports when it gave its blessing in 2003 to add BMX to the roster.
Samantha Cools.
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BMX had its start in the early 1970s when some California kids started mimicking their motorcycle idols by riding their bikes around dirt tracks and over obstacles. Now, barely at middle age, BMX could become the darling of the Games, offering an unparalleled wow factor for fans, both in person and watching on television.
"To have your sport showcased in the Olympic Games, it's like, yes, we've made it," said Tanya Dubnicoff, Canada's national team BMX coach. "We've been telling you guys for all these years we've been doing this sport it really means something and now it actually does by being an Olympic sport."
For Canadian athletes, the IOC's interest in making the Games hip has been a boon.
When beach volleyball was added for the Atlanta Games in 1996, the men's team of John Child and Mark Heese captured a bronze medal. Also that year, mountain biking was introduced and Alison Sydor won a silver. Snowboarding made its debut at the Nagano Winter Games in 1998, and Ross Rebagliati won gold in the giant slalom. In 2000, Karen Cockburn won bronze in the new event of trampoline gymnastics, and Simon Whitfield won gold at the first triathlon, at the Sydney Games.
Cools and Scott Erwood, 20, of Surrey, B.C., who got his ticket to Beijing after a ride-off in Chula Vista, Calif., on another replica of the Olympic course, hope to add their names to that list when BMX makes its debut on Aug. 20 and 21, featuring 32 men and 16 women.
This event is only for the fearless.
Eight riders at a time will burst out of the gates and onto a dirt track that begins with a massive eight-metre drop — about two storeys high and almost twice as big as the regular circuit — at the Beijing Laoshan Bicycle Moto Cross course.
Similar to the snowboard cross event, which made its debut in Turin in 2006, riders will snake around banked corners, known as berms, and jump over tabletops, gaps and rollers while trying to maintain control over the rhythm section — a series of rollers, the rough equivalent of moguls in skiing.
During the pedal-heavy adrenalin rush, riders can reach speeds in excess of 60 kilometres an hour and soar up to 12 metres in the air. The 350-metre course for women and 370-metre track for men is designed on a four-metre incline so athletes can maintain speed to get around it in 35 to 40 seconds.
Form and technique don't count. Only time matters.
"Getting that perfect gate start is the toughest part of the course," said Cools, who acknowledges the massive drop was daunting at first.
Spectacular falls are unavoidable.
U.S. star Bubba Harris nearly lost a foot in a crash on the Beijing course a year ago. His left ankle was so badly shattered, Chinese doctors thought amputation was the only option. Surgeons pinned his ankle back together so he could ride, but despite a dogged comeback, he failed to make the U.S. Olympic squad.
Cools was barely walking when she followed in the tire tracks of her older brothers, Greg and Ken, jumped on her first bike as a toddler and pedalled into what is probably Canada's first serious family of BMX.
"I've been a BMX racer since I was three years old," Cools said. "There's been no other cycling discipline that I've participated in. BMX is my life and it will always be my life."
Her father, John Cools, transformed a run down a BMX course into a world-class training centre while coaching his kids in the sport.
Ken, her 29-year-old brother, was a champion racer before suffering back injuries that left him unable to compete. He honed his skills as a coach while teaching his sister every trick in the book. However, he was recently tapped to tutor the New Zealand squad for Beijing, including his sister's main rival, Sarah Walker, who is ranked No.ƒ|1 in the world by the International Cycling Union.
But Cools, ranked No.ƒ|1 in North America and No.ƒ|7 in the world, has her own pedigree of hardware.
She has racked up dozens of victories and medals in national and world championships, including two wins this season and 13 Canadian championships.
But Cools became so good, she had to leave home to train. She connected with Swiss champion Herve Krebs and began training at the World Cycling Centre in Switzerland.
"It's often a challenge when you're living in Canada and you have an athlete that's head and shoulders above everyone else and everything else that the country can provide," said Dubnicoff, a former Olympian.
Now, Cools says her motivation has never been higher. She's never trained so hard or pushed her limits as she has with Krebs. It has been a dream for Krebs to work with an athlete who is so talented in a sport that is both technically challenging and physically demanding.
"It's a really, really hard discipline to work everything," Krebs said. "We need everything. We can't miss something during the training."
It hasn't always been a smooth ride for Cools.
Her chain broke during the 2006 world championships, leaving her dreams in the dust. She suffered a concussion after a crash at the Canadian championships in 2007. Last spring, her chiropractor overrotated her neck, ripping tendons and muscles and making it tough to even eat. But she competed at the world championship in Taiyuan, China, and placed an impressive fifth. She says massage treatment has patched her back together and she expects to be 100 per cent in Beijing.
"I'm really motivated right now to push through it," Cools said. "I came in fifth in the world's in China ¡K and I was injured at the time, so I feel my chances are extremely good going into the Olympics and coming out there with a medal."
