Lara Lessmann is annoyed. The wind. The sun protection tarpaulin on the gallery of the BMX park flaps so much over her head that one might worry that she is about to say goodbye in the direction of the lake. “This is a disaster for us,” says the best German BMX rider. The athletes don’t need gusts of wind on their hand-made special bikes made of titanium and carbon. When the freestylers perform the most difficult tricks and backflips (which used to be called somersaults) at a height of a few meters, millimeters decide whether they hit the pedal correctly and land perfectly on the course – or not. Nevertheless, Lessmann easily qualified for the final on Friday (3.30 p.m.) in third place. “I was struggling a bit but the first pressure is gone, the first impressions are there, tomorrow I’ll go all in.”
Normally, the 22-year-old drives and flies a safety run first. At this BMX European Championship, which takes place as part of the Multi-EM European Championships, after two second places at the European Championships, she wants to land the big hit in the first final run. Especially since she is being treated as a medal contender, which also corresponds to her own claim in this BMX park with the huge ramps and kickers on the Olympiaberg. And this time there is equal opportunity.
In Tokyo she was sixth – but Lara Lessmann was still ailing.
(Photo: Naoki Morita /Aflosport/Imago)
That wasn’t quite the case at the Tokyo Olympics, where Lessmann finished sixth. On the one hand, she was handicapped by a broken collarbone, which she sustained six weeks before the games at the World Cup in Montpellier in France: “I just wasn’t fit yet, that handicapped me.” On the other hand, the competitors from England and Australia had gained an advantage by identically replicating the Tokyo course in their home training halls. Not surprisingly, the women’s gold went to British Charlotte Worthington and the men’s to Logan Martin of Australia. In addition to Lessman, Worthington is one of the favorites again on the Munich Olympiaberg, she has already won the qualification. Then there’s Olympic bronze medalist and European champion Nikita Ducarroz of Switzerland, who finished second in qualifying – one of the three athletes will snatch the title as things stand. Reliable forecasts, however, as in other sports, are not possible, explains Lessmann: “That’s what makes BMX Freestyle so interesting”. Every athlete has the opportunity to ride the course according to their ideas and “to be creative, to show good tricks, it’s not about the time or any specifications”.
Lara Lessmann’s big brother was also a BMX professional, so her path was practically mapped out
Not only the spectacle is evaluated, it is also about technology and execution to convince the jury. One of Lessmann’s strengths is that she knows how to deal with pressure: “I can actually deliver when it matters.” That is the common thread in her career so far, in which there has already been great success despite her young age of 22.
She started riding BMX at the age of nine, her two older brothers were already enthusiastic about it, one even as a professional, as far as one could speak of professional structures at that time. The little sister showed such great talent that she soon had to decide whether she wanted to follow the path of her big brother. She wanted, and she showed impressive determination.
At the age of 17, she moved to a sports boarding school in Berlin alone because of the better training opportunities, where she did her Abitur. Not an easy decision, as she says: “My mother always supported it and said I should try it, and if I got too homesick, just call and she’ll pick me up.”
The question of whether BMX is a fringe sport annoys the 22-year-old Berliner by choice
There was no call, also because great success soon followed. At the beginning of her career, she still had to compete with male colleagues because there were simply no competitions for women and girls – that has changed fundamentally in the meantime. In 2018, Lessmann won the gold medal at the Youth Olympic Games, and the following year she was on the podium in every World Cup. Then Corona came, which initially slowed her way to the top. “Everything was closed in Germany,” she says, including the Olympic bases, first there was no training at all, then in the group: “But BMX freestyle thrives on the community,” she says. Many nations would have used this leaden time to catch up, Lessmann believes, in a sport that received a decisive boost at the latest when it was included in the Olympic program. Will BMX eventually leave the niche of fringe sports?
A question that annoys Lara Lessmann at least as much as the wind: “It’s already happened,” she says. “Sports like climbing, beach volleyball, breakdance, surfing or BMX are becoming more and more interesting, you can’t overlook that.” And: “We’ve had equal payment for a long time now, men and women have had the same prize money for a long time.” BMX is a high-performance sport, she argues, the athletes are also professionals – and the effort involved is correspondingly high. In BMX, as in many young sports, there are fewer rules, while creativity plays a major role. Lara Lessmann backs up her thesis that BMX is still an underestimated sport with a conclusive question: “How many sports have a problem finding young talent? BMX certainly not!”