The event was thrown into chaos earlier on the final day when the serious weather warnings forced officials to make major changes to the format and schedule of competition.
Racing was brought forward several hours with some stages cut out of the pathway to the finals as officials worked feverishly to push the event through to a fair and safe conclusion. All event starts were also moved from the 8m supercross start hill to the 5m hill used by the age group challenge classes.
Buchanan could not recall racing in such tough conditions at this level and said it was a challenging day for every rider.
“This is by far the toughest conditions we’ve raced in for a world champs,” Buchanan said.
“It was absolutely nuts. From the time we woke up this morning I was cool, calm and collected. I was actually about to pop up the laptop, put Kardashians on in bed and call my mum, then the next minute we got the call to say racing’s been pushed forward about five hours, we’re not racing the big hill, rain’s coming in, we’re going to have one warm up lap on the small hill. It was crazy.
“We’ve never had that at a world championships. Most of the time racing’s postponed if it’s like this at a world title but they just pushed us through and no one was prepared for it.”
Wild weather and nail biting racing aside, Buchanan was over the moon to have made it onto the podium at another world championships, finishing only behind Venezuela's Stefany Hernandez.
“Coming into the final (Olympic and world champion) Marian Pajon, she was out, I had really good lane selection,” Buchanan said.
“To cross the line in second I’m just really stoked to do that for Australia and myself.
“I really wanted to win today and get the rainbow stripes (awarded to the world champion) but at this level and in this craziness it could have gone the other direction so I’m stoked to pull it together.”
Australia’s high performance team, including Willoughby, Dean and Buchanan have a mini-break in Europe next week before they go into camp in the Netherlands on Thursday ahead of the next round of the UCI BMX Supercross World Cup in Engelholm, Sweden on August 15-16.
News Article By BMX Australia
Australian golden girl Caroline Buchanan has won the silver medal in the elite women’s event on a rain and windswept track at the UCI BMX World Championships in Zolder, Belgium on Saturday. Buchanan stayed upright in a wild women’s final but Australia’s elite men were not as lucky, Olympic silver medallist and defending world champion Sam Willoughby taken out by Swiss rider David Graf at the head of the field in a men’s final where compatriot Anthony Dean also hit the bitumen.
After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.