London 2012 Olympics: Reade suffers more heartbreak as golden dream turns to dust

SHANAZE Reade had waited four years for this moment. Four years to atone for her failure in Beijing, when, as the favourite, she crashed out of the BMX final. Four years to qualify for the Olympics, reach the final, and get a result.

In the end, she didn’t get close.

Reade qualified for the final all right, claiming a first place and two seconds in the three races which made up her semi-final. With four riders going through, she was second behind Caroline Buchanan of Australia, who had had two firsts and a second place.

Would the 23-year-old from Crewe pull off another first, or would she finish behind the Australian for a third time that afternoon? Well, she did finish behind the Australian again – in sixth place to Buchanan’s fifth.

Mariana Pajon of Colombia was a convincing winner of the gold, ahead of New Zealand’s Sarah Walker and Laura Smulders of the Netherlands. Reade and Buchanan were left to reflect on what might have been, and whether they expended too much energy racing each other in the semis to have enough left for when it mattered most.

“The race schedule has been pretty hard, with the back-to-back laps,” the British cyclist said. “It’s been hard to recover. I just tried to stay focused and do my absolute best, but today it just wasn’t good enough.” Needless to say, the schedule was the same for everyone. There was half an hour between each of the three semi-finals, then another 30 minutes’ wait before the final itself. In fact, Reade, having competed in the first semi, had had slightly more rest than those who were in the second.

She seemed numb at the end, unsure of what had gone wrong, of why her dream had turned to dust. “At the moment I’m pretty emotionless. I do not have any emotion in me yet, but I am sure it will sink in. The Games is the biggest platform you can race at and you’ve just got to give it your best.

“I felt like I was fast enough and I had done all the work that I needed to. Unfortunately, I just didn’t have the start I wanted or needed to win the race. That was it.”

Once the emotion has had time to sink in, Reade will surely decide that yesterday’s race was worse than Beijing’s. The ethos of BMX is to win or die trying, and she did that, metaphorically at least, in 2008, crashing in an all-or-nothing bid to overtake the leader rather than settle for a guaranteed silver medal. Here, she finished meekly.

British hopes were also dashed in the men’s final, when Liam Phillips crashed. He got back on his bike and completed the course, but finished last, and admitted that by the time he crashed he had been out of the running.

“It all happened way before I crashed, to be honest,” the cyclist from Taunton said. “I came out of the first turn and Sam Willoughby jumped – I wasn’t sure which way he was going to go – and I had to made a split decision and unfortunately I made the wrong one as he jumped to the inside and clipped my front wheel.”

Willoughby, of Australia, was the silver medallist behind Maris Stromberg of Latvia, while Carlos Oquendo of Colombia took bronze. Phillips, having had surgery earlier in the year on a broken collarbone, was pleased to have made it to the Games, and with the effort he put into competing here.

“I cannot sit here and be too disappointed. I am really pleased with the way I rode. I went out there to win, but I got beat to the first turn and got caught up in a bit of carnage,” he added.

“I will not too lose too much sleep, because I am really, really pleased with the way I rode. I loved every moment of it in front of 6,000 people all cheering for you.

“I finished because it was a matter of appreciation. The crowd was phenomenal and there was no way I was not going to finish that race.

“It may be a cliché, but I am not a bad sport. You crash, you get back up and finish the lap.”

Britons may have been disappointed not to see a home rider on the podium, but, like Phillips, they could not be too disappointed with the event as a whole.

On the warmest day of the Games so far, the atmosphere in the BMX arena was blissed out and laidback. The competition is fierce, but enthusiasts of the sport are still supportive of all the riders, regarding the results as secondary.

Once Reade reflects on her underperformance, she is unlikely to feel the same way.