It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen Caroline Buchanan on the gate at a BMX race, for the past 19 months she has been struggling to fully recover from a devastating New Years Eve off-road car crash in New South Wales, Australia. A broken nose, broken sternum, two collapsed and punctured lungs and a punctured heart wall, resulting in … are you sitting down … 3 sternum reconstruction surgeries, 3 plates, 28 screws, lengths of cable to tie it all together and a whole lot of determination. Superhuman determination! You’ve all seen the images …
Now, finally, Buchanan has been given the all clear to return to full training and to, well … crash with confidence. So, what’s next? Caroline has confirmed to us, that for now, Freestyle will be put on the back-burner as she goes all in with Racing, which she describes as her ‘passion’. The goal? Tokyo 2020, obviously … but with just a year to go she knows it’s not going to be easy, ‘it’s going to be a massive hustle and goal to simply qualify for me’ …
Buchanan’s first competitive outing back on a bike will be at a Red Bull World Pump Track Worlds qualifier followed by the Olympic Test Event on the 12th-13th of October on the newly constructed Olympic track in the Ariake Urban Sports Park, Tokyo. That, to be fair, doesn’t give her a whole lot of time to get back to race fitness, both physically and mentally … but we have faith! The thought of finally getting to see Buchanan back on the track with the likes of Willoughby, Smulders and Pajon, who is also on her own path to full fitness, is a mouth watering proposition!
The true test for Caroline begins in February of next year where she will begin chasing Olympic points on home soil when the UCI Supercross World Cup Series rolls into Shepparton and then Bathurst for rounds 1 through 4 of the 2020 Series. Does she have enough time to regain her spot on the Australian Olympic roster … strap in, we’re about to find out!
