On Logan Martin’s Instagram page, there is a video of his winning run at the UCI BMX Freestyle world championships earlier this month. In just 60 seconds, the 27-year-old pulls off over a dozen mesmerising tricks. At one stage, he throws his bike forward at the top of a ramp, fully disconnecting from its handles as the bike rotates and Martin hangs in the air, before human and metal reconnect to complete the manoeuvre. The commentators are stunned, noise replacing words for several seconds.
The video has almost 200,000 views. In his caption, the Queenslander concedes that he was “very close to losing the bike on the front bike flip but managed to get a hold of it.” He signs off with a devil emoji and a rainbow, the latter signifying the striped jersey worn by world champions. In the comments, American counterpart Dennis Enarson simply offers: “Best ramp run ever!!!”.
For anyone not acquainted with the sport of freestyle BMX, the video is jaw-dropping. Martin executes frontflips, backflips and hypnotic 1080 spins in a silky-smooth run around an indoor arena in Montpellier. But if Martin has his way, his exploits in France are just a taste of what is to come when the sport makes its Olympic debut at Tokyo.
“I have won pretty much every event in BMX freestyle,” says Martin. “If not once then multiple times. I just won the world championships for the second time. I don’t doubt that I can win an Olympic gold medal.”
Martin is speaking during his final day in hotel quarantine, having returned two weeks earlier from France. Light is visible at the end of the tunnel, although he will be back in quarantine in early August following the Olympics.
“I have just been taking it day by day really,” he says. “I have some gym equipment in the room so I am still able to work out. I’ve been doing puzzles to keep me busy, keep my mind active – rather than just sitting around watching television. It is a long two weeks – but you have to do it, I suppose.”
That may be the federal government’s requirement, but it does not make for good preparation. The international trip was inevitable – Martin needed to race in France to confirm his selection for Tokyo – but it means a disrupted lead-in to the Games. “Not being able to ride my bike is unfortunate,” he says. “Once I get out of here I’ll have just over four weeks to prepare for Tokyo. But I’ll put in the work and do my best to get back on it.”
BMX was introduced in 2008, and is one of four cycling disciplines at the Olympics – alongside track, road, and mountain bike. Similar to motocross, riders sprint around an off-road track. But for the first-time in 2021, BMX racing will be joined by its more eye-catching sibling, freestyle.
“Freestyle BMX is pretty much gymnastics on a bike – that’s probably the easiest way to explain it,” says Martin. “We’re at a skate park, we do tricks on a BMX bike – backflips and all sorts of things like that. We have one minute to do all our biggest tricks.”
At the Olympics, a panel of five judges will score each rider’s run between zero and 99.99 – the rider is awarded the average, and the highest score wins. “There are a number of things the judges will mark you on – how much of the course you use, difficulty of tricks, variety of tricks – things like that,” Martin continues. “It’s an overall impression of a 60 second run.”
BMX freestyle has been on the rise for some time. “In the past 10 years, the sport has progressed tremendously,” says Martin. But that rise has been supercharged by its Olympic inclusion. “I don’t see it slowing down anytime soon,” he adds. “After the Olympics, after they see it on TV and see it as an Olympic sport, I hope that will get more kids on bikes.”
Such has been the increased competition in freestyle that, two years ago, Martin built a stake park in his backyard, in the Gold Coast hinterland. “I saw that the level of BMX – since it got into the Olympics – was rising fast,” he says. “I didn’t have a training facility around me, I was just riding local concrete skate parks. I figured if I wanted to get to the Olympics, I needed my own training facility – so I built one!”
Make it to the Olympics he did, but his selection – and world championship jersey – came amid heartbreak for compatriot Brandon Loupos. Australia went to France with two qualifying spots on the line, but Loupos, a former world champion, was injured early in the competition. “That was hard,” says Martin, compassion in his voice. “It happened just before my run, but I had to focus on what I needed to do.” The injury means that Martin will be Australia’s lone competitor in the men’s event (together with female counterpart Natalya Diehm).
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When Martin was 12, growing up near Logan City, Queensland, his family moved house and his life changed forever. “We moved close to a skate park,” he recalls. The Crestmead skate park quickly became a frequent hangout spot with his new high school friends. “It just became an everyday thing – after school we would hang out at the skate park and then on the weekend we’d check out different skate parks.” But rather than pick up a skateboard, Martin preferred riding his bike. “I thought skateboarding was cool, but I never had the knack for it,” he says. “I enjoyed holding onto something I suppose!” Coincidentally, skateboarding will also make its Olympic debut in Tokyo.
Since finding BMX freestyle at 12, Martin’s passion has not waned. “In the early days the idea that I could make a career out of it never crossed my mind – I just went to the skate park to hang out,” he says. “But I stuck with it. In the early years the guys I was riding with would stop riding at 16 or 17, and I would have to find different people to ride with, so I could keep riding. But I did. I went through different phases, made new friends, just kept changing it up to stay on the path I was on.”
Martin has now been riding professionally for almost a decade (and has gained just under a million social media followers along the way). When he first went pro, his focus was on the X Games, at the time the sport’s pinnacle. But as BMX freestyle became more popular, other opportunities arose: Martin won the inaugural 2017 UCI world championships and is a two-time national champion. The same year as his first world title, freestyle was added to the Olympics.
“Winning Olympic gold was never the original goal,” he says. “But it definitely became a massive goal. During my career I have ticked off so many accomplishments. I have surpassed every goal that I set. But this would be the top – this is the biggest stage of them all.”
Martin heads to Tokyo in a month’s time, and will have to familiarise himself quickly with a new course. “You never ride the same course twice – each event has a different course,” he explains. “They have similar ramps, similar materials, but just different obstacles in different places. You don’t really know what’s possible on a course until you ride it. You going into the practice days with some ideas, and then you play around to see what works.”
Four minutes are all that stand between Martin and Olympic gold. The BMX freestyle runs over two days, featuring nine riders. Each is given two 60-second runs to determine seeding on the first day. On the second day, riders get another two attempts – but only the best score on the day counts. “Two runs, one counts,” recites Martin, mantra-like.
Despite his Olympic dreams all coming down to just 60 seconds in the arena, Martin insists he feels no stress about the do-or-die format. “There’s always pressure whenever I go to an event,” he muses. “But the pressure doesn’t come from the outside. That stuff – Olympics, medals, hotel quarantine – it’s just white noise. I put it on the back burner and focus on what I need to do. The pressure comes from within.”