The Colombian Cycling Federation and the Colombian Olympic Committee were notified this Friday June 28 by the International Cycling Union (UCI) on the allocation of a quota in BMX Freestyle for the Olympic Games Paris 2024, one of the last modalities to close its nomination process.
This historic classification for the South American country was achieved thanks to the process that the twins Queen Saray and Lizsurley Villegas have been advancing under the guidance of coach Alejandro Caro, and after the eighth place obtained by Queen in the World Championship of the modality held in 2023 in Glasgow (Scotland), a competition in which she finished in eighth place.
This numerical quota will have as protagonist Queen Saray Villegas Serna, the young woman born in Buga 21 years ago (June 3, 2023), who comes from finishing in seventh place in the Olympic Qualifying Series held in Shanghai and Budapest.
Although Villegas did not qualify for one of the six spots in this competition, his performance in Glasgow allowed him to place second among the countries without a spot with the best performance at the 2023 World Championships, which was enough to secure his Olympic spot in the BMX Freestyle park category for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
The twelve BMX Freestyle slots for Paris 2024 were assigned to: Hannah Roberts (USA), Jiaqi Sun (China), Perris Benegas (USA), Yawen Deng (China), Nikita Ducarroz (Switzerland) and Natalia Diehm (Australia), for the Olympic Qualification Series, and Switzerland, Czech Republic, Great Britain, Colombia, Germany and France, for the UCI allocation.
Colombia will have for the first time a representative in the Olympic BMX Freestyle, in the modality that was premiered in the program of the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020.
The BMX Freestyle competitions will be held at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, on Tuesday 30 and Wednesday 31 July 2024.
Source: Federación Colombiana de Ciclismo