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BMX competition at the Toronto Pan Am Games set to heat up Centennial Park

At the same facility that recently hosted the BMX Canada Cup in Etobicoke, Ont. -- the Centennial Park Pan Am BMX Centre -- the BMX segment of the Pan Am Games in Toronto is set to begin.

At the same facility that recently hosted the BMX Canada Cup in Etobicoke, Ont. — the Centennial Park Pan Am BMX Centre — the BMX segment of the Pan Am Games in Toronto is set to begin, with semi-final and final races for men and women, as well as the addition of quarter-final races for the men.

In the men’s competition, the favourite is Connor Fields of the United States, currently ranked third worldwide. As the defending Pan Am champion from 2011, Fields was the winner of the UCI BMX World Championship in 2013, too. Brazil’s Renato Rezende is another medal contender, currently sitting at fifth in global rankings. And with a bronze medal in the 2012 Olympics. Carlos Mario Oquendo Zabala, hailing from Colombia, also throws some momentum into the competition.

Colombia is also represented by Mariana Pajon, the so-called “Queen of BMX” who has dominated the competition as a defending Pan Am, Olympic and World Champion. During the 2012 Olympics — the same Games that saw Zabala take bronze — Pajon was her country’s flag-bearer during the opening ceremonies.

With competition heating up home soil — soil with which Canadian competitors are well accustomed, having recently tackled the course at the Canada Cup — officials from Team Canada are optimistic.

“The strength that we have is the home court advantage,” said Ken Cools, the head coach of the Canadian team. We’ve raced this track three weeks ago at a Canada Cup event. Everybody did very well, making the podiums. Expectations are fairly high, seeing how this is a Canadian event and we have competed on this course before.”

That said, Cools is well aware that the pressure is on for his athletes, but equally candid that it’s something for which the squad is well prepared. “Extra pressure?” he said. “These guys live with pressure. Every day is pressure. So I believe it’s not so much added pressure, but it’s almost like a warm blanket.”

Canada’s Amelia Walsh, who successfully defended her Canadian title at the 2015 Canadian BMX Championships in Drummondville, Que., has definitely felt that pressure herself, she told reporters. With Walsh, though, its source strikes a little closer to home, with the thought of competing on Canada’s behalf eclipsed by other, more personal concerns. “Definitely there’s that pressure,” she said, “because a lot of my friends and family actually haven’t seen me race. Half of them don’t even know I do.”

She agrees that racing on the Ontario BMX track that she got to know very well a few weeks ago relieves some of that pressure, though. “It’s definitely an advantage for all of us just because we are racers,” Walsh said. “We all grew up racing BMX so the less technical tracks are more of a BMX race rather than a supercross race.”

Tory Nyhaug, the reigning men’s champion since the Drummondville competition, sees it in a similar light.

“It’s not a difficult race where you have to spend every minute figuring out the track,” Nyhaug said. “We kind of already know the track. I just want to go out and have some clean laps.”

“It’s different than a usual world cup track,” he added. “Typically, the tracks raced in this style are a lot steeper and you can’t go at full speed a lot of the places because the backsides are really hard to jump. This one is more wide open, full speed, so in that sense it’s nice because you can think less and just go all out.”

Time trials kick off on July 10, with racing and medal presentations happening on Saturday, July 11.