A Peckham BMX racer who got silver at the last Olympics is preparing to compete in Paris but admitted he ‘hasn’t been on a bike’ for three weeks.
It hasn’t been smooth sailing for our local champ Kye Whyte as he gears up for the next games, which start on Friday 26 July.
The 24-year-old grew up in Peckham and has been racing bikes since the age of 3.
Kye’s talent saw him win a few junior titles before being chosen for the Great British Cycling Team in 2017. He was the eighth member of the Peckham BMX Club to join. In 2021, at the delayed Tokyo Olympics, he ended up winning silver in a close contest with the Netherlands’ Niek Kimmann.
He is going for gold at this summer’s games in Paris but revealed his training wasn’t going great.
“I went to a competition and injured my back,” he told the News, “I haven’t been on a bike in three weeks.”
As a contact sport, injuries are inevitable and Kye is no exception to that rule. “You’re 100 per cent going to get an injury,” he said.
“That’s the only bad thing about it – how dangerous it is. You can push people off the track.”
When he was thirteen, he suffered a serious injury that could have seen him quit there and then. But despite knocking himself out and waking up from a coma five days later in hospital, Kye said it was his ‘easiest’ one.
“I didn’t feel anything. It’s scary but you wake up and you’re fine.”
That said, he couldn’t get back on a bike for a year and didn’t even go outside for six months.
He referenced other injuries he has had and said there was no comparison, adding: “If I was ever to dislocate my shoulder again I think I would quit BMX.”
“That was the worst pain I’ve ever been in.”
His dad Nigel co-founded Peckham BMX track in 2013, in Burgess Park. Before that, he and his two brothers Tre and Daniel, were training on a small run-down dirt track in Bird-in-Bush Park.
As a kid, he has fond memories of travelling around the UK in his dad’s Vauxhall Zafira to weekend races. “The seven-seater would be full,” he said.
Although he was expected to train three times a week, it was the competitions he liked the most, commenting: “I still don’t like training now.”
“When I was young, I used to make excuses all the time. It was a bit harder because my dad was usually the coach, but I still tried to get out of it.”
BMX Racing only became an Olympic sport for the 2008 games in Beijing.
Kye is on a mission to get more kids into the sport.
There is currently a documentary on CBBC based at his old stomping ground, Peckham BMX Club, which follows under 16 riders on the path to success.
His advice to young people in BMX racing is to ‘start as early as possible.’ “A lot of the top BMXers now started when they were kids,” he continued, “It’s easier when you’re younger.”
Asked who he thought was his biggest competition for the upcoming games, he said: “The French dominate BMX but they’ve never won an Olympic medal.
“But this year it’s in Paris so I’d say they’re going to be the biggest competitors. The fans are the best crowd you can have.”
The previous winner who beat Kye before won’t be competing. Bethany Shriever MBE, from East London, is representing Great Britain alongside Kye and will be racing for the women’s team.