Helensburgh BMX gold medallist Saya Sakakibara has vowed to defend her title at the 2028 Olympic Games during a rousing hometown hero's welcome in Helensburgh.
More than 200 people attended the official welcome home event for Saya and her brother Kai, held from 11am at Helensburgh Tigers Rugby League Football Club HQ, at Rex Jackson Oval.
During a Q&A session, Maryanne Stuart, Member for Heathcote, asked Saya if she was going to defend her title at the next Olympics, which will be held in Los Angeles in 2028.
Saya promptly replied “Yes!” to laughter and cheers from the crowd.
“The first goal was to get one for sure. And then I was looking at it the other day and I was thinking: 'Now I want another one.’ So, definitely.
“The rest of the season is finished, so I don't have any more racing for the year and then the next World Cup season next year is only going to start in June. So there's still quite a lot of time for me to really decompress after these last four years.
“I would just want to come back to next year with a really clear plan and, yeah, give it everything and see if I can make it to LA as well.”
During her opening address to the crowd, Saya thanked the Helensburgh and district community for its unwavering support for her and Kai over the years, describing it as “heartwarming”.
“Thank you everyone for coming today. It really, honestly, is so heartwarming and I’m just so happy that I got to do this. I've just thought about what I can do for the community for so much support we've had over the past three years, and even all the time, all the years that we've been living here.
“And I'm so glad that we got to do this.”
She had some words of wisdom for any potential BMX champions in the crowd.
“It's just all about believing in yourself, believing in the fact that you can get there. And then as well as, you know, hard work, obviously you need to put in the work that you need to, I had to put in a lot of hours of training and things like that.
“And then also being resilient is huge. It's so important. And, for me, if I had given up when times are really hard and when I was at my lowest, recovering from my concussions, I definitely wouldn't have gotten this gold medal.”
Saya told the crowd that challenges and even failures had provided her, as an athlete, with valuable lessons.
“We always think of challenges as something quite negative. And in my experience, except especially something like that happened in Tokyo three years ago, it felt like such a failure for me, to crash and to not get what I want.
“And I came home feeling really bummed, but I'm really grateful for that experience that I did fail, and I did not get what I want, because I learned the necessary things that I needed to learn.
“I had made the changes that I needed to change in order to grow as an athlete, to get me where I'm today.
“So, don’t shy away from the challenges because on the other side of that could be something amazing.”
Saya acknowledged the sacrifices her family have made in order to help her and Kai achieve the competition success they have and for her to, ultimately, win Olympic gold.
“BMX is an individual sport … and it's something that we, I, can’t do alone.
“This gold medal is not something that I've won by myself … there's so many people in my corner that have contributed to that. But, of course, my family are my biggest supporters … and were so supportive of me from such a young age.
“They [her mum and dad] gave up their weekends and drove us all around the country to race. BMX took us around the world as well, which was such an incredible experience.”
Special guests included Alison Byrnes MP, Federal Member for Cunningham; Kerrie Blackwell, Helensburgh Help admin and organiser of the event; and Helensburgh Tigers Rugby League Football Club president Dodge Cobb.
Maryanne Stuart closed her Q&A session with Saya by presenting her with a framed copy of the community recognition statement that the MP made to NSW Parliament on August 6, which praised Saya’s achievements.
Saya and Kai then signed autographs for the many gathered fans.
Local artist Sarah Rowan was offering limited-edition autographed prints of Saya, with a portion of the proceeds from these sales going to support the Helensburgh Off Road Cycle Club (HORCC), which hosted this event.
Saya's gold-medal achievement in this year's Olympic Games was even more incredible in the wake of an extremely difficult few years for her family. Says and older brother Kai were for a long time both associated with elite-level BMX success until Kai suffered a traumatic brain injury when he crashed in his opening-round heat of the UCI BMX World Cup event at Bathurst in 2020. His BMX career was over and his life forever changed. He was 23.
The impact of her brother's ongoing ordeal has weighed heavily on Saya while she's also had to endure her own set of challenges – race crashes, concussions and crushing self-doubt – on the path to success, including being crowned UCI BMX Racing World Cup champion in 2023 and 2024 prior to the Paris Games.
Maryanne Stuart summed up the community's pride in the Sakakibara siblings today, saying: "We are enormously proud of you both."
