Red Deer’s Molly Simpson takes silver in BMX at Pan Am games

At the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games in Chile on Sunday, Molly Simpson took the silver medal in the Women’s BMX final.

After her seeding runs in Saturday, Simpson, 20 started the race in third place on the track. She had consistently achieved top-three finishes in each of the six quarter- and semi-final heats leading up to the final.

In the final, Molly completed the race with a final time of 36.000, behind the gold medalist, Mariana Pajón Londoño from Colombia, who finished with a time of 34.400 seconds.

Craziest race in Simpson’s career

“Honestly, I think that was the craziest race I’ve ever raced,” Simpson, who was the u-23 women’s bronze medallist at the 2022 UCI BMX world championships, said. “Came out of lane five and decent start, just tried to get over but there was carnage, people were hitting tires and it was just crazy. I did my best to get out of that and hold that second spot. I looked up to Mariana Pajón for so long, she’s two-time Olympic gold medallist, she’s my idol so placing behind her is just amazing. It shows that I’m almost there and I’ve just got to keep working and I’m really enjoying it.”

Teigen Pascual, 20, of Squamish, B.C., placed ninth overall for the women. In the men’s competition, Ryan Tougas, 21, of Pitt Meadows, B.C., and Curtis Krey, 20, of Etobicoke, Ont., finished 10th and 11th respectively.

Teamwork made it happen

“The team worked really hard for this,” Adam Muys, the Canadian national cycling team coach said. “Molly battled throughout the day, had a small mistake in her second semi-final, which we capitalized on by learning moves to make in the final. I’m really happy she performed her best to take the silver medal. Coming into this, Ryan was dealing with a bit of an injury, which he worked through and pushed himself until the last heat for making the final, where he just missed out. Curtis, too, was coming back from an early season injury. It was really exciting to see him battle all year to get back to the level he wants to be at.”

SILVER for Molly Gwen Simpson 🇨🇦 🥈

The Canadian raced to a 2nd place finish in women’s BMX racing pic.twitter.com/lbcPMcTJoH

— CBC Olympics (@CBCOlympics) October 22, 2023