A BMX History Library chapter · United Kingdom section

Bethany Shriever

A village in Essex, a funding decision that went the wrong way, and the first Olympic gold medal in British BMX

Legend Bike Co · BMX heritage series

Two years before Tokyo, Beth Shriever was a nineteen-year-old from a village in Essex, working part-time in a nursery, telling BBC Essex that she was struggling and needed help. She had finished 17th at the previous year's World Championships in Baku. Her governing body's funding agency had decided that British women's BMX was not worth investing in for that Olympic cycle. Her plan for getting to the Games was her parents, a part-time wage, and asking the public.

On the morning of 30 July 2021 she came out of the gate first in the Olympic final at the Ariake Urban Sports Park and never gave the lead back. She beat Mariana Pajon of Colombia, the two-time Olympic champion she had grown up watching. It was the first Olympic gold medal Great Britain had ever won in BMX racing, and it happened about half an hour before Kye Whyte took silver in the men's race.

Finchingfield and Braintree

Bethany Shriever was born on 19 April 1999 and grew up in Finchingfield, a village in the north Essex countryside. She started BMX at around eight years old at her local club in Braintree. Her father Paul described the family as one that lives and breathes BMX racing — something they did as a unit, traveling around the world together, and something he says bonded them.

The junior years were not smooth. She fractured her wrist three times. In 2014 she broke her leg, and then broke it again in her first training session back, landing a jump hard enough to bend the metal rod that had been put in and shatter the bone a second time. Her mother Kate's account is that a lot of people wrote her off at that point. She was out of the sport for about eighteen months.

She came back and in 2017 won the junior women's world title at the UCI BMX World Championships in Rock Hill, South Carolina. That is a junior world title, and it is not the same thing as an elite one, but it put her on the map. It is also worth noting the venue, because seven years later Rock Hill would be where a world title got away from her.

The funding decision

UK Sport, which distributes public money to British Olympic sport, reviews its investment after every Games. In the review that followed Rio 2016 it stipulated that in BMX, going into the Tokyo cycle, only male riders would be supported. The reasoning offered was results-based. No British rider had ever won an Olympic BMX medal at that point.

The practical effect on the only serious British woman in the sport was immediate. Shriever left the national set-up and went solo.

Here is where the popular version of the story tends to compress things, so this page will be specific. She and her family worked out what a full qualification campaign would cost — travel and accommodation to Argentina, Tokyo, the United States and everywhere else the qualifying races were — and the figure was around fifty thousand pounds. That was the sum she said she needed, and it was well outside what the family had. To close the gap she used three things: her parents' money, a part-time job as a teaching assistant in a nursery, and a public crowdfunding appeal launched in 2019. Reporting on the appeal puts what the fundraising page itself took in at just under five thousand pounds. A club in the north of England ran a fundraiser for her. So did her old primary school. British Cycling covered some events but could not cover them all.

So the accurate sentence is not that she crowdfunded fifty thousand pounds. It is that she needed fifty thousand pounds, was funded by nobody official, and pieced it together from family, a nursery wage and the goodwill of strangers and her home town while racing a world circuit against fully funded professionals.

She was plain about how it felt at the time. She said her rivals around the world were all doing it full time and funded, she was the only one not getting much help, and she did not want her dream of Tokyo taken away just because of money.

Later in 2019 it changed. Stephen Park, British Cycling's performance director, saw what she was doing and persuaded UK Sport to let funding be re-allocated. Shriever moved to Manchester and came back onto the programme as a full-time athlete. She later said that being given the chance to go full time shot her in the right direction.

Tokyo, 30 July 2021

The Games were postponed a year by the pandemic and kept the Tokyo 2020 name. Shriever had not raced for eighteen months because of it, and had dislocated a shoulder in training earlier in 2021.

The track at the Ariake Urban Sports Park was 495 meters, the longest in Olympic history — long enough that the racing rewarded riders who could hold power to the line rather than pure gate speed. Shriever won all three of her semi-final runs. Back in Essex her parents Paul and Kate had been up since five to two in the morning; her first semi-final run was delayed long enough that her siblings went back to bed for another three quarters of an hour.

In the final the gate dropped, she surged to the front, and that was the race. Pajon, chasing a third Olympic title, could not get past. Shriever crossed the line as Olympic champion, got off the bike and could barely stand. Kye Whyte, who had taken silver in the men's final, picked her up and carried her. The photograph of that went everywhere. His line afterward was that he was happier for her than for himself, and that she puts in some serious graft.

Great Britain, which had never won an Olympic BMX racing medal, won gold and silver in one morning. That day is the spine of the modern British chapter of this sport, and both riders' pages in this library carry it.

What Shriever said she wanted out of it was more girls, and boys, getting into the sport — and that if you commit to something and have fun doing it, you can be rewarded for it. Park's own hope, stated at the time, was that people would be able to see themselves in a Beth Shriever or a Kye Whyte and that British cycling would get broader as a result.

Elite world champion, three times

The Olympic title was not the peak of a one-off season. Within weeks of Tokyo, at the 2021 UCI BMX Racing World Championships at Papendal in the Netherlands, she won the elite women's world title. Olympic champion and world champion in the same summer.

In July 2022 she won the elite women's title at the UEC BMX Racing European Championships in Dessel, Belgium. Great Britain took both elite European titles that weekend, with Kye Whyte winning the men's.

In August 2023, at the combined UCI Cycling World Championships in Glasgow, she took the elite women's world title back on home soil. Second rainbow jersey.

2024 broke the run. At the 2024 World Championships in Rock Hill, South Carolina — the track where she had won as a junior in 2017 — she won her first two races and then crashed on the final straight of her semi-final and did not go through. At the Paris 2024 Olympic Games she reached the final as defending champion and finished eighth. Whyte crashed out of the men's semi-finals at the same Games.

In August 2025 she went to the UCI BMX Racing World Championships in Copenhagen and won the elite women's final by more than a second, crossing in 35.614 ahead of Saya Sakakibara of Australia and Judy Baauw of the Netherlands. Third elite world title, eight years after the junior one.

Where the record runs thin

Timeline

• 19 April 1999 — born. Grows up in Finchingfield, Essex.
• around 2007 — starts BMX at her local club in Braintree, aged about eight.
• 2014 — breaks her leg, then breaks it again in her first session back. About eighteen months out of the sport.
• 2017 — junior women's world champion, UCI BMX World Championships, Rock Hill, South Carolina.
• 2017 — UK Sport's post-Rio review confirms only male BMX riders will be funded for the Tokyo cycle. Shriever leaves the national set-up.
• 2018 — 17th at the World Championships in Baku, her first senior appearance.
• March 2019 — tells BBC Essex she needs to raise about fifty thousand pounds to chase Olympic qualification. Working part-time as a teaching assistant in a nursery.
• later 2019 — Stephen Park persuades UK Sport to allow funding to be re-allocated. Shriever moves to Manchester and returns to the programme full time.
• 30 July 2021 — Olympic champion, women's BMX racing, Ariake Urban Sports Park, ahead of Mariana Pajon. Britain's first Olympic BMX gold. Kye Whyte takes silver the same morning.
• August 2021 — elite women's world champion, UCI BMX Racing World Championships, Papendal, Netherlands.
• July 2022 — elite women's European champion, UEC BMX Racing European Championships, Dessel, Belgium.
• August 2023 — elite women's world champion, UCI Cycling World Championships, Glasgow.
• May 2024 — crashes on the final straight of her semi-final at the World Championships in Rock Hill.
• August 2024 — eighth in the women's BMX racing final at the Paris Olympic Games.
• August 2025 — third elite world title, Copenhagen, winning the final in 35.614 ahead of Saya Sakakibara and Judy Baauw.

Where this sits in the bigger story

When BBC Sport wrote about Shriever's crowdfunding appeal in March 2019, it described her as the standard-bearer of British BMX following the retirements of former world champions Shanaze Reade and Liam Phillips. That is the handover, stated plainly at the time by people who had no idea how it would turn out.

Reade won three elite BMX world titles and two track world titles and went to two Olympic Games without a medal. Jamie Staff won a BMX world title and then won his Olympic gold on the velodrome instead, at Beijing 2008 — the first Games at which BMX racing was contested at all, run under officials including Erma Miller as secretary commissaire for the discipline. British BMX had world champions for thirteen years before it had an Olympic BMX medal.

Then two arrived in one morning. Shriever's gold and Kye Whyte's silver are inseparable in the record and in the photographs, and they came from opposite ends of the country and completely different circumstances — a south London club track in Burgess Park and a village club in north Essex.

The uncomfortable part of the story is that the funding agency had already decided, on paper, that this was not going to happen. It is worth keeping in the record alongside the medal.

Sources

BBC Sport, "Tokyo Olympics: Beth Shriever wins Olympic gold after funding cut and double leg break," 30 July 2021 — the final, Mariana Pajon, winning all three semi-final runs, Kye Whyte carrying her after the line and his comments, UK Sport's 2017 decision to fund male riders only, the fifty thousand pound figure, the part-time teaching assistant job, the leg broken twice in 2014 and the eighteen months out, the three fractured wrists, the dislocated shoulder in 2021, Paul and Kate Shriever's accounts, Stephen Park's intervention in 2019 and the move to Manchester, and Shriever's own comments. BBC Sport, "Beth Shriever: BMX rider turns to crowdfunding in 2020 Olympics bid," 14 March 2019, interview by Victoria Polley for BBC Essex — the crowdfunding appeal, 17th at the 2018 World Championships in Baku, the 2017 junior world title, the description of her as standard-bearer after Shanaze Reade and Liam Phillips retired, the club and primary school fundraisers, and British Cycling's partial event support. BBC Sport, "Cycling World Championships 2023: Great Britain's Beth Shriever reclaims women's BMX title," 12 August 2023. BBC Sport, "Britain's Shriever wins third BMX world title," August 2025. UCI, "UCI BMX World Championships: Elite wins for Bethany Shriever and Arthur Pilard," August 2025 — the Copenhagen final, the winning time of 35.614, the margin of more than a second, and Saya Sakakibara and Judy Baauw on the podium, together with the confirmation that this was her third elite world title after Papendal in 2021 and Glasgow in 2023. British Cycling, "European champion Beth Shriever leads Great Britain Cycling Team at 2025 UCI BMX Racing World Championships," 25 July 2025, and the team report of 3 August 2025. British Cycling, "New European Champions, Shriever and Whyte named in squad for UCI BMX Racing World Championships," 13 July 2022 — the Dessel European titles. UCI preview of the 2024 World Championships at Rock Hill. Cyclingnews, "Olympic BMX champion Shriever: Crowdfunded en route to gold," and CBS News coverage of the same, August 2021 — the crowdfunding page total of just under five thousand pounds. Wikipedia, "Beth Shriever," for date of birth and outline career details, cross-checked against the contemporary BBC reporting above.

Checked and unreachable at the time of research: bmxsociety.com and bmxmuseum.com.

Last reviewed: August 2026. Bethany Shriever is an active competitor and this chapter will be updated as the record grows.