After Atalanta

ESPN.com has a good article on the debut of BMX racing as an official Olympic sport. Apparently it was a fan favorite and appeals to people from all over the world. Winter Olympian Gretchen Bleiler was there watching and believes BMX racing will change the Summer Olympics the way snowboarding changed the Winter Games. Not sure if it will have exactly the same impact given that there are a lot of snowboarding events and only a few BMX racing ones. But I think the addition of an "action sport" into the Summer Games is a good thing. As does this writer from the Vancouver Sun who also offers some good descriptions of what fans of the BMX events were privy to in Beijing.

Did anyone else know that BMX biking (the cross country race course kind; not the tricks and aerials version) had been added to the summer Olympics? Yeah, me neither. And, of course, there will be women participating because new sports have to have a men's and women's event(s) where applicable. And, despite the fact that the United States is a BMX powerhouse, there are other countries that have athletes who will strong gold medal contenders in Beijing. On the women's side there's New Zealand, France, and Great Britain. Great Britain?? Huh, interesting. Especially in light of this article about the need for greater promotion of women's sports in the UK. The BMXers are hoping their Olympic presence will increase the sport's popularity. Who knows, maybe post-Beijing we'll see a cadre of British girls hopping on their BMXes and hitting the dirt.