BMX riders do not usually find themselves unable to walk at the end of a race. When Bethany Shriever crossed the line first in that most emotional and surprising of gold-medal moments it was the first time ever her legs had buckled.
She wanted to run to her team-mate Kye Whyte, who had just taken silver in the men’s race, but could not stand up.
“I wanted to celebrate and Kye was saying, ‘We need to celebrate, we need to celebrate,’ but I physically could not walk,” the 22-year-old says. “It was a bit of a shame as I wanted to run up to Kye but instead he was there to lift me up.”
It is one of the iconic images of the Tokyo Olympics, the manner in which Whyte swept her up into his arms like a caped motocross superhero. That heartwarming image is even more meaningful than it might first appear.
“I’ve seen the pictures everywhere, Kye’s absolutely amazing,” she says. “He was so happy for me. What a moment. We’ve gone on this journey together. We were on the Talent Team together aged 12, we’ve done camps, travelled together, I’ve trained with him pretty much every day at the National Cycling Centre in Manchester.”
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Shriever honed her racing by competing against men. Marcus Bloomfield has been her coach for the past two years and, she says, “it was unknown territory for him because he was dealing with the boys’ side of things”.
We discuss how girls can develop better when training with boys.
“When it comes to jumping and pushing me to do stuff that other girls wouldn’t, then 100 per cent,” she says. “I trust them and Kye has helped me. They are compassionate and have learnt to deal with me on a down day. They know to give me a hug.
“The only negative is I need more experience being around girls on the [start] gate. Boys do not give a ****. I feel girls worry about who is next to them and they back off more than the boys. But I went to a camp in the Netherlands with five girls which helped me with my prep.”
Her key cues, she says, are timing and aggression, which she has picked up from the boys.
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We are in the Shriever family garden not far from Saffron Walden, Essex, and Bethany shows me her father Paul’s shed, a Tardis-like construction jam-packed with about 50 of what she calls old-school bikes.
“He keeps some stuff secret from my mum because he spends so much money on building bikes,” she says laughing, “but he loves it. He’ll buy a frame and then parts and some are really rare.”
Paul says that he was dumbfounded at how his daughter timed her performance to peak at the Games but presumably she was less surprised?
“In the build-up there were days when I did question things,” she says. “I hadn’t seen any good times in the final week. I was getting PBs on my sprints so I knew I was fast and the strongest I’d ever been but the last piece of the puzzle was that time at the bottom of the hill. On my very last session I got the time. I knew then I was ready. By that last corner, my legs were already in bits, they were burning. Pure burning.”
Shriever gave it everything because she promised that she would. She was called into a meeting with Stephen Park, known as Sparky, the British Cycling performance director, who, she recalls, asked: “If we put money into you and believe in you, can you bring back a medal?”
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“I said, ‘Yes, 100 per cent.’ It was quite intense because Sparky was saying, ‘We need medals, we need medals,’ and I was like, ‘OK. If you believe in me, I’ll train and give it as much as I can.’ They believed in me and got UK Sport and the National Lottery behind me as well and that helped fund my journey. They’ve obviously made the right decision because I’ve come back with a gold medal.”
It may sound like a fairytale but she had her funding taken away in 2017 and was instead offered the chance to train in Manchester without financial assistance. She decided to stay with her family and take a job as a teaching assistant at a local primary school working with five-year-olds.
“I loved it because they develop so quickly it’s nuts and the parents were so lovely, especially with the crowdfunding, buying T-shirts with my Tokyo logo on it.” Her mum, Kate, came up with the crowdfunding idea to pay for Bethany to be able to compete in Australia.
“I ended up going there and doing pretty well in the World Cups, which was part of the qualification for Tokyo, and we had to pay for a coach who was well known and was pretty expensive.”
The pricey coach was none other than Shanaze Reade, the former darling of the British BMX scene, who commentated for the BBC on Shriever’s race with near delirium.
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“She gave me racing experience, changed the way I looked at training and believed in me and that felt very nice. We ended up going our separate ways during lockdown. We both had other plans and I have been working with Marcus the last two years through British Cycling.”
We laugh at how the riders are told to “mind the gate” and I tell her I once sat at the top of a course, behind the gate, only to decide the drop was far too terrifying. “It is daunting,” she says. “When people watch us they think they can do it but when they try it, they say, ‘Oh my God this is harder than you think.’ ”
The BMX World Championships start on August 17, so she was back training on the track on Thursday.
“I feel people will look at me differently now,” she says. “Before my final my season had been up and down. But hopefully my rivals will be thinking, ‘I’ve got Beth Shriever on the outside of me now, or I’ve got Beth Shriever in my race.’ It’s kind of a good feeling.”
She describes herself as skilful and relaxed. “When people see I’m waving at the camera,” she says, “they know I’ll do well.”
