Nasty Back-to-Back Crashes Mar Olympics BMX Semifinals

The BMX semifinals at the Tokyo Olympics were marked by two frightening crashes that sent Connor Fields of the U.S. and Australian Saya Sakakibara to the hospital on Friday. Fields, 28, who won a gold medal in 2016 and was the favorite at these Games, was taken out of the event on a stretcher; a team spokesman said Fields is “awake” at a hospital but gave no further information about his condition. Mark Anderson, a Las Vegas Review-Journal sports reporter, posted on Twitter that Fields’ father said his son’s abdomen and spine “checked out clear.”

Minutes later, Sakakibara, 21, crashed; she is riding for her brother, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in the run-up to the Olympics.