US BMX star Alise Willoughby aims for first gold at her fourth Olympics after triumph and tragedy

MONTIGNY-LE-BRETONNEUX, France -- Alise Willoughby is back at the Summer Olympics for the fourth time, trying to win the gold medal that not only has escaped her own grasp but that of her husband, Sam, a standout BMX racer in his own right until a fluke crash left him paralyzed.

They've experienced everything together — joy and heartache, failure and success.

You see, the preternaturally positive Sam coaches Alise from his wheelchair these days, steadfastly connected to two of his greatest loves: the sport and his wife. And the product of their work will be on display again beginning Wednesday at the BMX course just outside of Paris, where the current world champion will again be favored to win gold.

“I think my path has been so scattered, up and down,” Alise Willoughby told The Associated Press in a wide-ranging interview, “and unfortunately with quite a bit of tragedy, and then the highest of highs. But I think for me, overcoming the challenges and ultimately seeing things as opportunities to be better yet again, I just embrace that challenge.”

BMX racing can perhaps best be described as NASCAR on two wheels, where riders shoot from a starting gate, down a steep ramp and into a tightly twisting course filled with bumps and jumps. It is high-speed, close-quarters racing with a high likelihood of dramatic crashes, and Willoughby has seen her share of those on the Olympic stage.

She was two years shy of the age cutoff when the sport made its Olympic debut at the 2008 Beijing Games, but when she did qualify for London in 2012, the brilliant young upstart was firmly in the medal mix until crashing out of the semifinals.

Her only Olympic medal came at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, and even that silver felt a bit hollow immediately afterward, given she was oh-so-close to gold. And while it galvanized Willoughby to continue pushing toward the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games, the three-time world champion again crashed out of the competition there and came up empty.

“That was the hardest,” she said, “because I had been so successful and everything had been going so good, and yeah, when it doesn't fall your way on the day, it's just like, ‘Why?’ You know? Like, how did this happen? It was hard to accept that.”

In the larger scheme of life, though, Willoughby has had to deal with far tougher times.

Not long after Sam, an Olympic silver medalist at the 2012 London Games, missed out on a medal for Australia in Rio, she headed home to Minnesota for a charity event. Her future husband stayed behind in California to begin training for Tokyo.

She was in the car on the way to Target Field when the phone rang and everything in her life suddenly changed.

His crash happened on a routine stretch of humps both riders had traversed hundreds of times. Sam popped a wheelie and fell backward, landing on top of his head. The father of a junior rider, who happened to be an EMT, was there and called paramedics, and a helicopter quickly whisked Sam to a hospital in San Diego, where doctors discovered the extent of the damage.

He had fractured his C6 and C7 vertebrae, severely compressed his spinal cord and would never walk again.

“Things sometimes just happen,” said Alise, who married Sam five years ago, an emotional ceremony in which he managed to stand for their vows. “Sometimes you’re driving a car up the street and something happens and it’s a total accident. And I think that's hard. And you can hate something and you can blame it, but at the same time — we obviously love what we do."

Willoughby loves it so much that she's still competing when most BMX racers her age have retired.

The 33-year-old from St. Cloud is the oldest rider, male or female, competing at the Paris Games. She's a full decade older than teammate Daleny Vaughn and 15 years older than Alina Beck of Germany, the youngest rider in the field.

One of Willoughby's few contemporaries is Mariana Pajon of Colombia, who also could be her biggest competition in France. She won back-to-back Olympic gold medals before taking silver behind Beth Shriever of Britain in Tokyo.

“I mean, most of them are not even in the same decade as me,” Willoughby said with a laugh. “But I was once told that you're never as experienced as you are right now, in this moment, and I think that was a way for me to look at things. Every time I get in the starting gate, I know there's nothing I haven't seen.”

There is one thing she hasn't seen.

The finish line at the Olympics with everyone else behind her.

“As good and as successful as my career has been," she said, "I still see more for whatever reason. So I just keep digging. And there are definitely points where you're like, ‘Hey, is this worth it?’ Or you know, you have your hardships at times. But it's just embracing those things ultimately as challenges, and accepting that has helped propel me to keep getting better.”

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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games