Alise Willoughby, BMX champion from St. Cloud, pursues the Olympic gold medal that has evaded her

Alise (Post) Willoughby is America’s most decorated female BMX racer, but the one medal she is still chasing is Olympic gold.

And at age 33, about to compete in Paris in her fourth Olympics, she knows: That’s OK.

In 2021, the St. Cloud native entered the Tokyo Olympics as a two-time world champion and a favorite for gold. But after the event semifinals, she stood on the course with her hands on her helmet, not thrown into the air while standing on a podium as she might have imagined.

For the second time in her life, a crash in the Olympic semifinals had kept Willoughby out of the finals and ended her chance at medaling. Before her silver medal in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, a similar semifinal crash at the 2012 London Games halted her medal hopes at her first Olympics.

Such trouble is rare. Willoughby hasn’t missed a finals cut in any of the world championships she has competed at since turning pro at age 15. That moment in Tokyo hit hard.

“I hadn’t really lost a race in a long time. I was a pretty heavy favorite,” she said. “And then for it to go how it did, it was almost shocking, like I couldn’t even believe that it happened. It didn’t feel real.”

Alise’s coach and husband, Sam Willoughby, knew how she felt. They are “cut from the same cloth,” Alise said. An Australian BMX racer, Sam won a silver medal in London before a 2016 training incident paralyzed him from the chest down and ended his racing career. He since has become Alise’s coach — and, after Tokyo, her road-trip companion.

Once Alise returned from Japan, she and Sam loaded their dog, Milo, into her Toyota RAV4 and headed north from their home in San Diego. They stopped in Utah’s Park City, in Yellowstone, in Montana and the Dakotas. They visited Mount Rushmore to celebrate Sam’s new U.S. citizenship. They would book each night’s hotel 20 minutes before arriving.

“They both know the disappointments, they know the highs,” said Alise’s father, Mark Post, whose family started St. Cloud’s Pineview Park BMX track, where Alise has trained since age 5. “They know where the other one is all the time because of that.”

Alise and Sam arrived in Minnesota in early fall, the lakes still warm enough for swimming. They flew to Chicago and New England to visit friends and family, stopping to see Fenway Park and Wrigley Park.

“Doing all the American things,” Alise said. “You get so one-track-minded as an athlete. You go to all these places, and you see the dirt track and the hotel.”

Her travels helped her with her mission.

“[Seeing] my people just reaffirmed and validated why I do what I do. What I’ve been through personally in my career has been a lot,” Alise said. “If you let that pressure [for gold] sink too far into you, then that becomes the only thing that’s acceptable, and at the end of day, it’s not the only thing.”

Seven months without serious training ticked by. Alise raced but did not begin to ramp up her training regimen until the 12 weeks leading up to the 2022 World Championships, where she finished fourth and felt fit, a strong contender.

“It just kind of validated that I could keep going. We’re kind of in an uncharted territory in our sport, with age and everything,” Alise said.

And it showed that “one day at the track in Tokyo wasn’t everything,” she said.

Alise had her eye on the 2024 World Championships, hosted in Rock Hill, S.C., where she won her first world title in 2017.

As she crossed the finish line at Rock Hill, winning her record-tying third world title and her first since 2019, Alise pumped her left fist into the air before pressing her forehead to her handlebars. She hugged Sam and leapt into her father’s arms. “She was just radiating such joy,” Mark said.

“I haven’t been far off, but it’s also like a bittersweet thing when you’re right there,” Alise said. “I’ve been waiting on going on the top of the podium. I’ve had a lot of close ones.

“It just gives me a huge confidence boost that even at this age I’m still right there.”

At the Paris Olympics, Alise is the oldest entry in the 33-racer women’s BMX field, which will compete in quarterfinals Thursday, then semifinals and finals Friday. Alise is the only Minnesota Olympian in a fourth Olympics — and it could have been five, but she was two years shy of the BMX racing age cutoff for the 2008 Beijing Games.

“Obviously, an Olympic medal is the pinnacle of our sport, but at the same time, personally, I see that world title as validating as any medal,” Alise said. “I can just rest easy and proud on that consistency and length of my career. And I’m just really looking at Paris as the icing on the cake.”

“I have goals [for gold], but no expectation of it, because at the end of the day, in Tokyo, I was as fit and prepared and in the best shape I have ever been in, but it just wasn’t my day at the track,” Alise said. “Those things happen, and they don’t dictate you or define you as a person or your career, and that’s where the experience is going to play in my favor. I can approach this Games differently.”

“I’ve had it both ways, and the sun still came up both ways.”