Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Born | Cedar Hills, Utah, U.S. | July 30, 1985||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Height | 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Weight | 143 lb (65 kg) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sport | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Country | United States | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sport | Cycling | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Event | BMX | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Coached by | James Herrera | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Arielle Martin (aka Arielle Verhaaren; born July 30, 1985) is an American BMX cyclist. [1]
She crashed in the quarter-finals at the World Championships held in Taiyuan, China, on June 2, 2008, with the result that Jill Kintner, her friend and roommate at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California, finished in sixth place, which was enough to guarantee Jill the only automatic women's spot on the US BMX Olympic Team. USA Cycling has a 17-race points series, and Jill had 129 points to Martin's 128. Kintner made up and went beyond a 13-point deficit with her sixth place and Martin's crash, became the one US Women's representative in the BMX racing event, and received a bronze medal, a medal she says was half won by Martin, who, after crashing, returned to the training center to help Kintner train. [2] The two say that living together in the training center just made them able to push each other, as they remained neck and neck until Martin's accident. [3] They had worked so hard together that Kintner characterized her win as bittersweet, at first more bitter than sweet. [4]
Martin finished a degree in exercise science in 2007 at Brigham Young University. She was married in December 2007 to Michael Verhaaren and has taken his name except for when she is involved in bike competitions. They left their Utah home on separate missions, she to train for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, and he to spend a year deployed in Afghanistan with the US Army. [5]
Martin's father was a BMX racer. As a young girl, she watched him, then started riding a BMX bike at the age of two. At 15 she turned pro and in October 2007, became the third woman in the world to do a backflip on a BMX bike. [5] Martin has said that missing the Beijing Olympics made her more determined than ever to remain at the top in BMX and to compete at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. [6] Martin was selected to compete at the London 2012 Olympics but a crash during a training run on July 30 in California, hospitalized her and left her out of the team, being replaced by Brooke Crain. [7]
Martin is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [8]
Anne-Caroline Chausson is a French professional cyclist who competes in bicycle enduro, bicycle motocross (BMX), downhill time trial and cross-country mass start, dual, and four-cross mountain bicycle racing. She is best known for having won thirteen Union Cycliste Internationale senior mountain bike world championship rainbow jerseys, fourteen European mountain bike championships, and five consecutive Mountain Bike World Cup downhill series (1998–2002). She was nominated for the 2003 Laureus World Sports Awards Alternative Sportsperson of the Year. At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Chausson competed for France in the inaugural women's BMX event, winning the gold medal.
Cheri Elliott is an American former champion female bicycle motocross (BMX) racer in the 1980s, and a champion Downhill and Slalom mountain bike racer in the 1990s and early 2000s. During her BMX career, she spent most of her racing career on the national circuit with the Skyway Recreation factory team. She had a relatively short BMX career, but she is a four-time national champion and four-time world champion, including three consecutive National Number One girl-racer titles for the American Bicycle Association (ABA) from 1983 through 1985. She also held the regional UBR Number one girl racer title in 1982. She was the first female racer inducted into the ABA BMX Hall of Fame in 1989, and the first female BMX racer inducted into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame in 2008.
Kimberly M. Hayashi is an American professional "New/Current School" Bicycle Motocross (BMX) racer whose prime competitive years are from 2000–Present. Her many nicknames include: "Lil Kim", "Shorty", "Midget", "Sushi Roll", "Kim Woo", Lil Sushi, et al. all references to her diminutive 4' 10", 128 lbs. stature. She is also known as "Krashin' Kim" for her penchant to crash in races. She crashed in her first lap in her very first professional race in 2002 colliding with another rider. Despite this she would become the National Bicycle League (NBL)'s five consecutive number one professional women's racer from 2002 to 2007, which caused her to pick up yet another descriptive nickname: "Tenacious K".
Shanaze Danielle Reade is a British former bicycle motocross (BMX) racer and track cyclist whose prime competitive years began in 2002. She has won the UCI BMX World Championships three times. Reade is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Irish mother.
Donald Robinson is an American professional "New/Current School" Bicycle Motocross (BMX) racer whose prime competitive years are from 1999 to the present. His moniker is "dR", his initials. The use of the lowercase "d" for his given name is perhaps related to his relatively diminutive physical size. A past nickname, "Scrawny", was definitely linked to his small stature, since even when very young he was the smallest child in his age group. It was given to him by Bruce Minton. Like BMX predecessors Mike Miranda and Eric Rupe, Robinson is a devout Christian. He admitted in late 2013 to suffering at least 25 concussions over the course of his career. In the same interview, he advocated for better concussion protocol at the lower levels of BMX racing. Robinson joined the board of directors of concussion-education collaborative The Knockout Project in January 2013.
Alise Rose Willoughby is an American professional "Current School" BMX racing racer who has been racing competitively since 2002. She uses the moniker "The Beast".
Four-cross (4X), also called mountain-cross, not to be confused with fourcross, is a relatively new style of mountain bike racing where four bikers race downhill on a prepared, BMX-like track, simply trying to get down first. These bikes are generally either full suspension with 140mm to 160mm of travel, or hardtails, and typically have relatively strong frames. They run a chainguide on front and gears on the back. They have slack head angles, short chainstays and low bottom brackets for good cornering and acceleration. In recent years the tracks raced on have been rougher and less like those used in BMX.
Jill Kintner is a professional American "Mid School" Bicycle Motocross (BMX) and professional mountain cross racer. Her competitive years were 1995 to 2002, 2007 to 2008 in BMX, 2004 to 2009 in mountain cross, and 2010 to present in downhill mountain biking. She switched to the mountain cross discipline full-time after her BMX retirement early in the 2004 season.).
The women's BMX racing competition at the 2008 Summer Olympics took place on August 20–22 at the Laoshan BMX Field, the first to be officially featured in the Olympic cycling program.
Sarah Louise Walker is a New Zealand BMX racer. A competitor at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics, she won silver in the Women's BMX at the latter event. Missing out on selection for the 2016 Summer Olympics due to injury, she was elected onto the IOC Athletes' Commission during those Games. In 2022, she was elected as its second vice-chair.
Catharine Pendrel is a Canadian cross-country mountain biker from Harvey Station, New Brunswick. A member of the Canadian National team since 2004, Pendrel was the world champion in cross-country mountain biking in 2011 and 2014 and the 2007 Pan American Games champion. She is also the current reigning Commonwealth Games champion when she won gold in Glasgow. Additionally, Pendrel is the 2010 World Cup Champion as well as the winner of the 2012 UCI and 2016 World Cup Series. She won a bronze medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Tara Janelle Llanes is a Bicycle Motocross (BMX) racer and a wheelchair basketball player whose prime competitive years were from 1990 to 1993. She became a champion Mountain Bike (MTB) racer. She later played wheelchair tennis and wheelchair basketball for Canada. Her surname is pronounced "Yaw-ness" but for obvious reasons it is often mispronounced "lanes" as in the type of division of a pathway. Llanes is part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Caroline Buchanan is an Australian cyclist who has won multiple world championships in BMX racing and mountain biking. She represented Australia at the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics in the women's BMX event.
Catherine Cheatley is a retired New Zealand professional road and track cyclist. She won two New Zealand championship titles in both road race and individual track pursuit, and later represented her nation New Zealand at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Before her official retirement in June 2012 because of sustained bike crash-related injuries, Cheatley moved to the United States to race for the Cheerwine and Colavita–Sutter Home pro cycling teams in the women's elite professional events on the UCI Women's World Cup, and UCI World Championships, where she earned the bronze medal for the women's points race in 2007.
Ramiro Martín Marino Carlomagno is an Argentine professional BMX racing cyclist. He represented his nation Argentina, as a 19-year-old junior, at the 2008 Summer Olympics, and later claimed the bronze medal in the men's elite category at the 2009 UCI BMX World Championships in Adelaide, Australia, finishing behind the American duo and Olympic medalists Mike Day and Donny Robinson.
Michal Prokop is a Czech professional BMX and Mountain Bike Four-cross rider. Started his sporting career at the age of five, Prokop has claimed two World Cup circuit gold medals, and three World Championship jerseys in the men's elite category, emerging him as one of the most successful fourcross riders in the sport's brief history.
Amanda Sørensen is a retired Danish amateur BMX cyclist. Having started her sporting career at the age of seven and been admitted to the Danish national cycling team since 2002, Sorensen has mounted numerous Nordic regional titles and top-eight finishes in BMX racing at the European Championships, and admittedly, participated in more than 300 BMX circuits across Australia, the United States, Brazil, and Europe. Before retiring from the sport in September 2009, Sorensen also represented her nation Denmark at the 2008 Summer Olympics, and has been training with personal and head coach Christian Munk Poulsen for Skanderborg BMX Klub throughout her cycling career.
Anikó Hódi is a Hungarian amateur BMX cyclist. She represented her nation Hungary, as a 22-year-old elite rider, at the 2008 Summer Olympics and has been training throughout most of her BMX cycling career for Honvéd Bercsényi SE.
Jana Horáková is a Czech professional BMX cyclist. Having started BMX racing at age fifteen, Horakova has claimed numerous Czech national titles, eight European championship titles, and more importantly, two bronze medals in the women's elite category at the UCI World Championships. She also represented her nation Czech Republic at the 2008 Summer Olympics, and has been racing professionally for most of her sporting career on the Suzuki-RB Team, before signing an exclusive, three-year sponsorship contract with Duratec in 2010.
Hannah Roberts is an American BMX freestyle cyclist. She is a five-time world champion in the UCI Urban Cycling World Championships and silver medalist in freestyle BMX at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.