Dirt devils

Photographer Steve Gonzalez  and I spend 48 hours at the Olympic Training Center in March.   It was 48 hours of winging it.   Then we found ourselves “hiking it” in the 48th hour.   Really.

Look closely.  That’s Steve hauling a camera and tripod up the 30 foot start ramp on the BMX course.  It doesn’t sound like much until you’re halfway up and your gear shifts.  Or, so I heard from Steve later.  I was on the ground shooting still pics in case Jack lost his crown and the 50 grand camera came tumbling after.

Shooting the BMX course was like saving the best for last.  Although, we were less than spring fresh in our 48th hour of storytelling.

The practice track at Chula Vista is an exact replica of the Beijing track  on which athletes will race in August.  The USOC spent half a million dollars constructing an Olympic copycat. 

The US is expected to dominate BMX.  We’d better.  We invented the sport. 

There is a lot riding on BMX’s popularity.  The International Olympic Committee hopes that BMX will do for the Summer Games what snowboarding did for the Winter Games.   We’re talking about upping the cool factor.

And they don’t get much more cool, in my opinion, than Arielle Martin.

 The 22 year old BMX athlete is one of the top female racers in the world.  But, her heart is half a world away. 

 Arielle’s husband, Mike Verhaaren, is stationed in Afghanistan. 

Every Olympics has its “faces.”  They’re athletes who overcome some huge challenges to get to the start line.  Arielle is shaping up to be a “face.”  NBC sent a crew to Afghanistan to interview her husband.  Google her name and she pops up in newspaper articles across the globe.

Two women will represent the US in BMX in Beijing.  Odds are that Arielle will be one of those competitors women.   The better odds are that the only face Arielle shows any of us at the top of the Beijing start ramp is her game face.