Charlotte Worthington: Olympic Champion

Charlotte Worthington speaks on her road to the Olympics and coming away from Tokyo 2020 with a Gold Medal as BMX freestyle made its Olympic debut.

BMX freestyle made its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, bringin a fresh, youthful feel to the Olympic programme. British Cyclist Charlotte Worthington, also on her Olympic debut, secured a sensational victory in the event after landing a 360 backflip which has never been performanced in female competition, in a huge second move - having crashed attempting the move in her first.

Plagued with injury, the Games' postponement allowed Worthington to recovery from injuries and compete to secure her Gold Medal.

How does it feel to be the first Olympic women’s freestyle champion?

To be the first Olympic freestyle champion, really feels like years of grinding and being up against it is finally paying off. All the hard work came together that one day. We said it all along that we were going to peak on August 1 and it felt like a dream when it actually all happened and went to plan.

How was the lead up to the Olympics and what did you do in preparation for it?

The lead up was absolutely horrendous. I was struggling with a shoulder injury since the start of 2020 [as] I had surgery on it.

The original date for the Olympics was looking really tight and then it was a year later. I was very lucky to have the year. It was a blessing in disguise for me to have a year, due to covid, for me to catch up, and I learnt 90 per cent of the tricks that I did in the contest in that year.

The last 3 months before the games were like a complete rollercoaster. I was out training in the USA and then I took another hit to my shoulder. I fractured it and dislocated it the second time. I did that during training [but] I got over that super quick.

We had some success at the World Championships, two months before I got a bronze medal, so it was looking for kind of good and we were testing the waters for the games and what the run could look like.

On my first session back in the UK, we were setting our sights and narrowing down for the Olympic run. I dislocated my shoulder for the third time, and this was 6 weeks out of the games, so I has less than two weeks [of] rehab and recovery which was super intense and then I had three or four weeks nonstop on the bike. So going from having an injury two weeks before to having to go straight into my biggest tricks was a real mental challenge and there was definitely a lot of tears and times where we thought it wouldn’t even happen.

Given your injuries, how important was a strong support system leading up to the Olympics?

Massively, I had support around me, although I was the only girl in the UK doing this, I was never alone. I had great support from my coach Jamie Bestwick, my teammate Bethan Brookes and all the friends and family around the BMX community.

Before the Olympics, there wasn’t really many eyes on BMX so it was a very small community and everyone has been so supportive, skate parks included and the staff at British cycling. So, I had a lot of support mentally as well as physically. ➡

What does this achievement mean to you?

It feels like all those horrible little beliefs that you have in your head of always coming second or third or just messing up at the last minute, you kind of have to really get over those and this was something that I realised after the world championships just before the Olympics.

I looked back at my run when I was reviewing it with my coach and I realised that I actually had all the pieces to win, I just didn’t put them together in the right way and essentially didn’t believe in myself that I could have done it, so I was stressing over it for no reason. That was a little bit of a turning point, and it really was like the final step to making the gold happen, with the last 3 months being so up and down.

Five years ago, I was working in kitchens in a regular job, earning money to try and fund my hobby at the time. I was working 30-40 hours a week in a restaurant just trying to fund a hobby. I could only ride once a week because of time and money so I was so blessed to even get the opportunity back in 2018 to take on the Olympic journey.

It’s something that I started for fun, I just thought that I could be good at it and I enjoy riding my BMX, I enjoy sport and I just loved it so I grabbed the opportunity with both hands and for it to absolutely snowboard over the last four to five years has been incredible.

I’m 25 now and throughout my teenager years from about 12 I originally rode scooters, which is a really new kind of sport and it’s a very young sport. I wouldn’t say it’s extremely professional right now, there are people that can do amazing things on it, but again it was just fun. It was in the skate park environment.

I’ve always loved extreme sports like skateboarding, mountain biking and everything, so I was always surrounded by BMX. I did that from the age of 12 to about 19. And when I was 19, I [thought] I’m kind of done with that. I wanted a new challenge, something that was a bit fresh and again that I enjoyed. So that’s when I picked up a BMX.

It was all very similar, I already had the basic skills on a bike, so I kind of picked it up quite quick and really enjoyed it and I did that for a year. I competed once and in kind of a chain of events I was on a TV show and met a couple people, which lead me to trying out for the Olympic team at the start of 2018.

How do you think this will impact the popularity of the sport?

I hope it’s going to change a lot within BMX in the UK. Even though it’s the debut of the sport, it was definitely overlooked in the build-up to the games, there was a lot more focus on sports like climbing and surfing as well as other sports which are really cool, and I love them in their own right but it was definitely a bit overlooked.

I hope that my win, on a professional level is going to raise the profile of the riders that take it seriously. We work as

hard as all the other athletes out there just in a different way. We are just as fit, we have just as many neuro skills and it’s really difficult and dangerous what we do. I am hoping that it will raise the profile for those people, and I think the whole narrative behind my story and my win essentially can show that you can turn a regular hobby into a career and inspire the younger generation to get involved. As youngsters we started not thinking that we wanted to be Olympic champions, we started because we loved the sport. I think the whole narrative behind my win, starting in a regular job, “I hope that my win, on a professional level is going to raise the profile of the riders that take funding my hobby because I love it, taking an opportunity, again because I love it just it seriously. We work as hard as all the other absolutely snowballed and I hope that it inspires athletes out there just in a different way. We are youngsters to get involved just as fit, we have just as many neuro skills and in the BMX community and either take the Olympic it’s really difficult and dangerous what we do. ” journey and take it seriously or just do it for fun because cycling in general as well as BMX is a really great community and a lot of fun.

What are your plans for the future?

I’m only 25 now so I can see definitely one, possibly two Olympics in the future. I would love to go and try and defend the title. In the meantime. I haven’t won a World Championship title yet so I would like to set my sights on that within the next 2 years. Outside of BMX, I really want to break into opportunities outside the sport. At the moment, I’m taking as much advantage of the media coverage as possible to try and raise the profile of BMX and myself. I also want to work with brands outside of that to try and get even more eyes on BMX and really help fund the future. U