TOKYO — Alise Willoughby's face was red. She had not ventured into the warmup oval near the starting line, instead choosing to ride in a straight line behind the grandstands, her husband beside her.
Willoughby of St. Cloud entered the Olympic BMX race as the reigning world champion. You would hear in her voice later that she expected to add a gold medal to the silver she won in Rio in 2016.
In the first of three semifinal heats, she had sped down the eight-foot starting ramp, heading for her first jump, and she and Switzerland's Zoe Claessens had clipped handlebars. Willoughby's bike went flying and she fell to the hard racetrack.
Then she got up and was last in her heat, calculating the rest of the race how she could get back into contention.
Racers are awarded points for their placement in each heat, so even a last-place finish after a crash didn't end her hopes. She rode her bike slowly behind the stands, with her husband, Sam Willoughby, a BMX Olympic medalist and now her coach, speaking in her left ear.
Willoughby is paralyzed after a training crash, so he rode a wheelchair fitted with handlebars, and they cruised, and calculated. Sam did most of the talking.
Willoughby would finish third in her second heat. In the third and final heat, she surged into second place, positioning herself to qualify, however improbably, for the final. In the third straightaway. she again clipped handlebars, this time with Australia's Saya Sakakibara, and again fell the the track.
"There's definitely a lot of surprises out there," Willoughby said. "I'm just really disappointed that it's ending how it is, because I know in my heart where things were really at."
