Gone in 60 seconds: It’s a sad day for BMX rider Sae

Painful ending: Sae Hatakeyama of Japan crashes in the women’s BMX Racing quarter-finals. — AP

TOKYO: Less than a minute. That’s all it took for Japanese BMX rider Sae Hatakeyama’s Olympic dreams to crash as she fell and broke her collarbone in her very first run of BMX racing’s quarter-finals yesterday.

Hatakeyama’s exit will prove to be particularly painful for hometown fans, who also saw her male counterpart fail to qualify for the semi-finals.