Caroline Buchanan Q&A: Adrenaline brought me back to BMX after life-threatening injury

Australia’s Caroline Buchanan lives for the adrenaline rush of BMX racing.

She has had a long and successful career, including world championship titles in BMX and mountain biking, and two Olympic appearances.

During this time, the 30-year-old has suffered several life-threatening injuries, but somehow always finds her way back to the sport.

The feeling of dropping into a race and edging a rival to the finish line is like nothing else. In her own words: "The risk is always worth the reward."

We caught up with Buchanan for an exclusive interview from the UCI Supercross World Cup in Verona (8-9 May), which will be shown live on Olympic Channel and available to watch via Olympics.com, and where she is hoping to qualify for her third Olympic Games, at Tokyo 2020 in 2021.

Olympic Channel: What does this event mean for you in terms of its significance towards qualifying for Tokyo?

Caroline Buchanan: We've got one World Cup event here this weekend in Italy on Saturday, and another one on Sunday, and then there are two more in Colombia in a few weeks time. So it means a lot for a lot of athletes, the ones that are still fighting for those last country spots. For me personally, I'm the only athlete here from Australia. So I had to basically go by myself and I’ve got my amazing partner who's team manager and videographer. It's really my last opportunity to qualify for these Olympic Games. I was out for two-and-a-half years with some major injuries, and with no racing in the last twelve months, I haven't really had any opportunity to perform. So this World Cup is within our Australian qualifying window and I've just got to do my best. Hopefully a podium is obviously like a solid, tangible result, but we'll see. The fact that I was able to leave Australia at all has been a massive journey, and I think as an athlete, you've just got to have that belief in yourself. And to me, I believed in myself to take on the risk and to self-fund myself to this World Cup round.

OC: How much has it actually cost you to get here? Why are you willing to put so much money, so much energy and I guess risk so much for this?

CB: I had to invest so much into my recovery after my injury just to simply be back at the top of the field again, to be back on my bike. So the journey has really been the last three years of investment to be here today. Travelling in a pandemic, flights, and quarantining back into Australia, we have 14 days in a hotel room when I return home and then the other multiple COVID tests, it's pushing up with 20,000 Australian dollars plus ($15,700 US) for two people for this trip. I think that belief just comes from the belief in the process, belief in the training. I know that I've stuck to a really solid training foundation. I knew I had to get my deadlifts back up to 140 kilos, my power cleans up to 90 kilo. I knew that I needed to get my bench press, especially from having so many injuries to my chest, I really wanted to get that up as well. So that belief in the process that I've gone through in the training to be here now is what brings me a lot of energy coming into this race.

OC: You have had many reinventions in your career to date. What would being selected to represent Australia at your third Olympic Games mean to you?

CB: It would ultimately mean so much. We've got a solid depth in Australia. So we've got one men's spot, two female spots. We've got two other great competitors in Saya Sakakibara and Lauren Reynolds and myself. So it's not over until it's over and it's all discretionary. There are a lot of factors that they bring in to qualifying. But for me, the journey to be here has been a huge one. And it comes back to myself. It comes back to that belief. You've got to do it for yourself at the end of the day. The nerves that I get on that start line of racing, you can't buy that. I'm a racer at heart, so just to simply be back in that World Cup stadium and to be racing again, we had practise the other day and there's a massive triple going to the first turn that some of the women are jumping. Just to jump that and get that adrenaline, you feel alive and this is why you do it. And it reminds [me] of that five year old girl that fell in love with riding bikes. And 25 years later, I'm still riding piles of dirt and jumping through the air!

I've been really fortunate over the last few years of my career, I've jumped between mountain biking and BMX. So, like, the eight world titles that I've won, some have been in BMX, a little bit of mountain biking. After the Olympic Games, I go and compete in mountain biking, so that freedom has given me longevity in my sport. When I was injured for two-and-a-half years, my identity was what I did on the bike. Once that got stripped away, I found a lot of value in how I could support my sponsors, and support the people, and look into writing a kids book series, and continuing my girls scholarship programmes, and just investing back into women in sport, and to the grassroots, and giving back. That really helped me understand my value as a human being, not just as that Olympic athlete. So to come from there with a lot more gratitude to be back on the track racing again is proving the biggest shift that I found from having some major injuries and adversity.

OC: Despite all of your experience, when you do get to the top of that ramp at the start of the race do you still get nervous?

CB: Oh, yeah. For anyone that tunes in this weekend on the Olympic Channel to the World Cup, you'll see we drop in off an eight metre story building. We roughly hit about 50 kilometres per hour, it's eight people on the course, it's no white lines, and it's about a 40 second lap. It's quite intense. There's a men's section over the women's section, they jump over us. It's really cool. So check it out this weekend. I think the special thing about fear is it's that balance of risk-reward. When you're up there it's the reward of that feeling when you jump those big jumps, or you drop in and you have that little look at the competitor next to you and have that confidence to be in front of them. The reward is worth the risk a lot of the time. That's a balance of dealing with fear and acknowledging that the response that your body has to fear. We're all human and I go through it, everyone still goes through it. No matter how many years you've been doing this for, you always have fear. But to override it and learn to love that energy sensation that it gives you and to go out and do it anyway.

Writing kids books while I've been injured at home has been really fun. It's all about: girls can be brave, girls can be different, and that was inspired by true stories as well. It gives me a lot of energy, I love turning around and seeing that little girl that's been on my balance bike or that little boy out there, or that girl that I've helped to that world championship, who's now going on to compete in weightlifting or compete in rugby sevens in a completely different sport. I've had an impact which is important.

OC: You show a lot of your life behind the scenes on social media. How important is it to show a side of yourself away from sport?

CB: Yeah, and it's quite hard to do, especially when I had my injury. Lying in that hospital bed in ICU after I had just broken my sternum, broken my nose, and been crushed by a car. It was at that moment of thinking, should I show this vulnerability? Should I show this truth and how hard this journey is going to be from here? I think instantly overnight it was like 23,000 new followers on Instagram started wanting to know my journey. From there, breaking my sternum was the hardest part to come back from. That was the most time consuming, and three open-chest surgeries later, we managed to put bolts and screws and plates and they ended up wiring it as well to make sure it was sturdy for the rest of my career.

OC: What keeps you coming back after such horrific injuries?

CB: Every day during rehabilitation I focussed on gratitude. It really brought me back to the thought of, “What can I control here and now.” That really helped, especially now with the last 12 months with a delayed Olympic Games. What are the opportunities that are in front of me right now? And I think that really leads me here to Italy. If I took the easy option, I'd probably still be in Australia, racing mountain bikes. But this opportunity to believe in myself and to go, "there's an opportunity, a World Cup and an open window, and you've got to be on that dance floor to perform." And it's BMX racing. Anything can happen.

OC: Is there a quote or a mantra that you live by at the moment?

CB: I love little positive affirmations. I do my three gratefuls every morning, but I also love to say, “It's time to shine.” So when I'm up there, it's just that little reminder. I like to say, “I'm ready and I'm here to win.” It's that moment of confirming that you've done the preparation, and to not set limiting beliefs on yourself.

OC: What are your goals going forward?

CB: If I can make another Olympic Games, that'd be incredible. I've always wanted to have a round ten number of world titles, so I'd love to compete in the Red Bull Pump Track World Championship Series, which I haven't done yet. Crankworx is really doing a massive push for women's mountain biking. There's a huge women's mountain bike freestyle movement at the moment. So definitely I want to ride that as well.

But I think when we talk about this Olympic Games and what's coming up, I was reminded that it's about not winning, but about fighting fair and about the journey and being that true competitor. My Olympic moment would have been in Rio, after I crashed in the semi-final, I got up, had tears on my face and I'm like, "OK, I'm going to go watch the final." And I got a standing ovation from thousands of Colombians. Mariana (Pajon), she won two Olympic Games, 2012 and 2016, and she's Colombian, so she had a massive fans squad there. For me to have that moment, to have the standing ovation from her family, from all these Colombians and that respect... I didn't even make the final, I hadn't won, I hadn't come home with a medal or any of these goals that I wanted to do, but to be respected, I think that was my Olympic moment.