London Prepares - BMX Supercross World Cup 2011

After the major disappointment of failing to get Olympics tickets, Kerry found an alternative to get our bike sports fix. London Prepares was the organiser's way of testing out the newly built venues for next year's Olympics (and perhaps making a little money on the side). As well as basketball at the weekend, the Olympic Park was to host the UCI BMX Supercross World Cup. It was a two day event across a Friday and Saturday. Saturday's ticket instantly sold out so we had to buy Friday seats. Unfortunately, though annoyingly not known at the time of purchase, there would be no actual racing but just the riders doing their time trials for qualification.

Getting there was a simple tube train along the Jubilee line to Stratford. After that there was about a 5 minute walk around the new Westfield shopping centre being built. Before getting on the Olympics site bus, we had to have our bags scanned and walk through a metal detector. The site itself also had a airport feel with many views obscured by fences everywhere. Hopefully the landscaping will transform the site to a more open park environment. Lets hope they don't over do the security.

The BMX track looked very impressive looking more like a stadium Red Bull X-Fighters design. They were still 'shaping' the course after the reported rain from last night with a Bobcat mini-digger and a road construction roller which looked like great fun. The spectator stand wasn't totally full and we managed to get a decent view to see the course which included a tunnel for the lucky lady riders whereas the men had to contend with even more jumps.
 
Each of the riders had their own selected music as they rode their timed lap. Typical lap times were under a minute so you didn't get to hear much of their tunes. A few were stereo-typical choices for extreme sportsmen with one or two playing sweary over 18 lyrics whilst some Japanese riders chose quite down-tempo swing jazz

When one of the female riders went down after a bad jump landing, the paramedics rushed out with stretcher board to attend. The rider's music switched to the M*A*S*H theme tune which we found (unfortunate for the injured rider) hilarious. After I tweeted this fact, Twitter mate @stevewilde mentioned that Jimmy Carr (@jimmycarr) had the same observation status so it meant he was somewhere in the crowd. Kerry swore she saw him and I was expecting to hear his laugh but perhaps he tones it down in case of being recognised.

Spotted British BMX champion, Shanaze Reade as she sat just two rows from us and got pestered for her autograph by many a young fan including the two brats that kept passing us (can't you see I'm taking photos?!).

Despite the lack of racing it was a good experience seeing the complete Olympics' buildings and seeing some cool bikes.

Related articles

• London 2012 Olympics: Shanaze Reade records third-fastest time at BMX test event (telegraph.co.uk)
• London 2012 Olympics: Shanaze Reade romps to victory in the Olympic BMX Supercross World Cup event (telegraph.co.uk)
• Reade calls for BMX track changes (news.bbc.co.uk)