BMX: "Adrenaline rush" keeps Alise Post Willoughby going as her third Olympic Games loom in Tokyo

When Alise Post Willoughby takes to the BMX racing start gate at the Ariake Urban Sports Park in Tokyo at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 in July 2021, there will be one thing that gets the Rio 2016 Olympic silver medallist going.

"I love the adrenaline rush. You have to like a certain level of challenge to be in sports like [this]," she tells Olympics.com on a recent video call.

If selected for Tokyo, the top-ranked American woman on the UCI BMX rankings will be headed to her third Olympic Games. "I just like the challenge of [BMX]," she says.

"I like, specifically, that head-to-head competition of it, lining up in the gate. That rush I get from just knowing that there's an opportunity […] to beat the people next to me. Like, I just need to go faster than these people on either side of me.

"Maybe it's a little bit of [being an] adrenaline junkie, but it's also just a competitive spirit."

Nerves but no fear for BMX racers

Every time Post Willoughby takes to the start gate, she is aware that things could go wrong.

BMX racing is a risky sport; her coach and husband Sam Willoughby – silver medallist at London 2012 for Australia – uses a wheelchair after a training crash ended his career. It is something the Willoughbys have previously spoken to Olympics.com about.

You might be forgiven, given her family's personal circumstances, for thinking that Post Willoughby gets scared when she lines up for a race.

However, she insists the feeling of fear never comes into play.

"I feel like, yeah, there's nerves, but I feel like that's just competition: you want to give your best; you've put a lot of work into something and you care.

"I wouldn't say scared is what I feel. I think that if you ride with a certain level of fear about what could happen, I think that that hesitation [would be] crippling to any rider. Once you're out there and you're committed to doing it, you don't want to be riding with that.

"The few times when I had some of those questions, question marks for a bit, it's when things weren't going so well, there was crashing. There was things that weren't good. So I think when you're in [the right mindset], you're going to be all in and just embrace that challenge and the opportunity to give your best. And everyone wants to do that out there."

How she trains for a BMX race without access to the track

Some BMX Supercross athletes were able to check out the course they will be racing on at the Ariake Urban Sports Park as their sport successfully conducted a test event in October 2019.

"I think we're fortunate that we had a test event and we know the lay of the land," Post Willoughby acknowledges. "We'll probably have a very similar facility to what we competed on back in October 2019, which is a good thing that we have the experience in our back pocket to draw from."

However, Post Willoughby believes that a track that is less ridden on is actually more beneficial when the Olympic Games come around.

"The less everyone rides it, the better. It's just a more level playing field. Whenever we go to some of these repeat tracks, you just go into someone else's backyard. So it's I think it's just better for an Olympics to not have somewhere that is a routinely-ridden place. Just in the spirit of the Games, just everyone show up and get their get their time to get acquainted."

So how does she prepare, having only ridden on the Olympic course at one event?

"You can't mimic or practice the same jumps and terms or things like those things are adequate to that facility, we don't have replica anything here in the States or really anywhere in the world," she says.

"At the end of the day, they're the dirt tracks built by people with machinery, and they're not the same no matter where you try to replicate them. So you just have to kind of take elements of it. It's just being aware of what are the key elements of that facility and going working backwards from there."

Not calling it quits yet

Post Willoughby turned 30 in January, and while Tokyo would be her third Olympic Games, she is showing no signs of slowing down.

"I've never put a hard stop on anything post Tokyo to start with," she says pointedly, although she admits that she has thought of Tokyo 2020 as her last shot at an Olympic gold medal. "For me there never was something like a hard cutoff or anything.

"[Sam and I have] both kind of gone past that point in our career where we feel that any one result defines you. So I feel that I've ticked a lot of boxes for me personally on what I wanted to improve on and see, and just embracing this as an opportunity to kind of show the best of what I can be.

"I definitely think I've got more in me and I just keep going until that motivation isn't there anymore. I plan to keep racing and doing my thing competing. I love that, and I'm still in great physical shape.

"[After Tokyo] I'm sure there'll be a few months of time off and some eating some desserts and doing a few things. But yeah, I think you have to carry on after that."