For the guts, the glory and the spectacular stacks, there’s nothing quite like the Olympics BMX Freestyle competition.
Australia’s Natalya Diehm added her name to the history books Wednesday, 31st July in Paris with a bronze in the women’s contest, busting out an array of frontflips, no-footed can-cans, backflips and the types of manoeuvres the rest of us will never nail outside of our dreams.
Diehm defied five knee reconstructions to notch a best score 88.80 across two runs, joining China’s gold medallist Yawen Deng (92.60) and America’s runner-up Perris Benegas (90.70) on the podium.
Like most athletes, the 26-year-old finds her gears with music. The tune that helps her achieve lift-off might come as a surprise.
“I’m into any kind of rap music; my go-to is probably Chris Brown. But then also I’ll switch it up and there’ll be a bit of country … and I like old songs too,” she explains. “I’m a bit of an old soul. Recently I came across ‘King of Wishful Thinking’ by Go West – it’s an old song but I was like, ‘That’s a banger!’. It’s just on replay.”
Diehm wasn’t born when Go West released the pop number back in 1990. “King Of Wishful Thinking” was a banger on the charts, too, cracking the top 10 in the U.S. and Australia, thanks to its sync to the “Pretty Woman” soundtrack.
Those elite BMX bandits are constantly plugged into music.
“It’s the culture,” says Diehm, “you can’t watch BMX without some rap playing, probably. In my warm-up, I’ve got my headphones on, getting in the zone, playing [music to] rev me up and get me going. It’s very important. I can’t even imagine riding or even life [without music], music just makes me feel every emotion, so it’s important to me.”
Following Diehm’s historic medal, reigning men’s champion Logan Martin broke out his best moves in the two-stage final.
The Queenslander is “a massive fan of Morgan Wallen” and is “really digging” his collaboration with Post Malone, “I Had Some Help,” a No. 1 hit on the ARIA Singles Chart.
Music, he says, “plays a big part” in his process. “I use music to calm me down a little bit, so I don’t need all this crazy stuff to hype me up. I like to stay quite relaxed and try and just mellow out a little bit so I have some clear headspace. Som music for me does that, it relaxes me, it takes my mind away from it a little bit.”
Some of the competitors “need music to hype them up and get raring,” he reckons. “I like to listen to rap as well, but I don’t listen to rap to hype me up, it’s more to sing along to and mellow out a little bit.”
The 30-year-old wasn’t able to repeat his heroics from Tokyo 2020. In a field loaded with tricksters, the Aussie champ threw everything at the course, including new tricks. After wiping out in the first, Logan came unstuck in the second and bowed out of the medals.
Read more on the 2024 Paris Olympic Games at Rolling Stone AU/NZ.
