The men’s 100m final highlights a standout day of athletics
Training in bubbles has become the norm during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The Olympic Village in Tokyo has essentially become a big bubble in an attempt to isolate and protect athletes from testing positive for Covid-19.
But in the early days of the pandemic, there was an elite group of BMX competitors congregated at Daniel Dhers’ home in North Carolina where they all trained and prepared for the upcoming Summer Games in Tokyo.
The Venezuelan was speaking after winning a silver medal in the men’s cycling BMX freestyle at the Ariake Urban Sports Park on Sunday, where Australian rider Logan Martin won the gold medal.
“When the world ended last year, I did have a bunch of actual Olympians that are here today living in North Carolina and it was a bit crazy, but you know it’s my property, I can go,” the 36-year-old told the media.
“So what we did was like, ‘OK guys, we don’t know what this pandemic is, we don’t know where the virus is, let’s just make sure we don’t have any contact with anyone and create our own bubble’, before bubbles were a thing.
“We kind of did it and we had that understanding because, at that point, the Olympics weren’t postponed, so we had to keep riding. We knew that was our No.1 priority, so we rode as much as we could.
“It was kind of crazy because we would go to the park, and we didn’t know if we were breaking the law or not, so we were just like, ‘OK everyone, just park in different spots,’ so we were able to keep riding and if the police come, we’ll just tell them that we were kind of fixing a few things in the park.”
