Fear always rides with BMX golden girl Saya Sakakibara, even when she won her third consecutive World Cup series last month or pedalled to glory at the Paris Olympics.
As a child, when her older brother Kai revelled in the challenge of a tricky manoeuvre, Saya needed a push to try something radical in what has been ranked the most dangerous Olympic sport.
"I've never been a fearless girl," Saya tells Australian Story. "I've always taken calculated risks."
For a time, those calculations did not add up.
In 2020, she watched as Kai — "my teammate, my best friend" — crashed heavily on his bike in the lead-up to their childhood dream of competing in the Olympics.
Saya was confronted with the very real prospect that Kai could die.
But as Kai began his long road to recovery from a traumatic brain injury, Saya pushed down the fear and trained hard to get to the Tokyo Olympics, determined to bring home a medal for both of them.
Saya's dream was cut short in the semifinals when she crashed and hit her head. She was carried off on a stretcher with a concussion. Her Tokyo Olympics were over.
The fear grew.
Then another crash, another concussion.
By 2022, the fear was winning. Hurtling down an eight-metre hill, going from zero to 55 kilometres per hour in two seconds on tiny wheels, lost its appeal.
"The thought of racing again was terrifying," Saya says. "I didn't want to do it."
After a third concussion, she told sponsors she was retiring. The relief was huge.
But it did not last long. "Something inside me knew that it wasn't right to give up now," Saya says. "I knew that I had to give it one more shot."
Siblings find 'BMX heaven'
The Sakakibara kids sat in front of the television, transfixed by the spectacle of BMX becoming an Olympic sport for the first time in 2008.
Saya was nine and Kai was 12, and a dream took root.
"We'd never seen BMX on TV and there it is, in the Olympics, the pinnacle of all sports," says Saya. "The unique, weird sport that we do is on TV … look at what we can achieve now!"
The siblings had only recently returned to Australia after living in Japan, their mother Yuki's birthplace, and were thrilled to discover the sport was better catered for here.
"We could go to five different tracks within an hour and a half; it was just heaven for us," Saya says.
So, they did. "Every weekend was a BMX weekend," says their father, Martin Ward. "Every weekend."
Kai was fanatical about the sport, Saya a little less so, but under Martin's strong stewardship, the sibling duo became well-known on the BMX circuit.
They were a package. "We really wanted the Sakakibara name, not just Kai, not just Saya, but Sakakibara to be like a team thing," says Saya.
By 2017, they both held a national championship — Saya in the junior elite category, and Kai in the elite. "Both our names were up there," Saya says. "Yeah, it was cool."
When Saya turned elite in 2018, Kai showed her the ropes on the tour and organised their training.
"I had an awesome year," says Saya, who was also getting to know her now-boyfriend, French BMX rider Romain Mahieu. "I made multiple podiums in the World Cup circuit as well as the European rounds."
Life was good. Saya and Kai were ranked in the top 10 in the world and as the calendar clicked to 2020, the Sakakibaras were on course to seize that Olympic dream.
'I saw him go down': Kai's long road to recovery
The pressure was on Kai as he sped around the wet and windy track in Bathurst, NSW, in February 2020, acutely aware he needed a strong result to secure a coveted Olympic spot.
As Saya readied herself for her race, she looked up to the big screen to see her brother doing well, riding in second place.
And then, "I saw him go down".
It wasn't a spectacular crash, says Saya, and although she knew it wasn't good, her main concern was that Kai's Olympic dream could be in doubt.
It didn't cross her mind that he would be fighting to live.
When she arrived at Canberra Hospital the following morning, the gravity set in.
"Kai had a huge bleed in his brain," Saya says. "He had so much swelling around his face and his eyes were closed, hooked up to a ventilator. I couldn't believe that this was real."
Kai spent two months in intensive care. It was uncertain if he would walk or talk. An eight-month stint in the brain injury unit followed, then another six in transitional living.
Saya watched on in awe at Kai's dedication to rehabilitation — and trained like never before.
"That was a turning point for me where I took ownership of my riding and racing," Saya says. "I'd been following the footsteps of my brother … now I had to do all those things."
She saw it as a positive that the Tokyo Games were postponed to 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, reasoning that she could only get stronger.
The downside was that quarantine requirements had stopped her from attending competitions. She had not had a serious race in more than a year.
But for Saya, the fairytale was half-written as the Tokyo campaign began.
Here she was, back in Japan, lining up at the Olympics to win a medal, not just for her but for Kai.
Her first day of competition was scratchy, but Saya made it to the semifinals. Saya took the lead but started to tire as others gained. She jumped, a rival jumped — and they crashed.
When Saya came to, she was devastated.
"Knowing that it's all over after all this build-up, after talking to the media about my aspirations for the Games and doing it for Kai.
"I've crashed and I didn't get a medal and I didn't even make it to the final," Saya says. "It wasn't how it was supposed to be."
Crashes haunt Saya
Saya had never experienced concussion syndrome — the ongoing headaches, fatigue, mood swings — until after that Tokyo crash.
Given Kai's accident, it frightened her. "I have a living, breathing example of what could happen when you have a big head injury," she says.
Her boyfriend, Romain, noticed the fear getting a stranglehold after Saya's second concussion in early 2022, her first major race since the Olympics.
"You could tell she was scared from the moment she was on the gate and going around the track," he says. "She was just trying to survive."
Saya and her parents felt that cycling authorities did not do enough to help her manage ongoing concussion symptoms.
"I remember feeling super frustrated at the time that I've had so many concussions and no-one was really helping me. No-one really warned me about concussions and how it can affect you."
But Saya says the way cycling authorities manage concussion injuries is improving.
"There's now concussion baseline tests that we have to do before the season starts."
New Australian guidelines issued by peak body AusCycling in 2024 aim to educate riders and race officials about how to identify and manage concussions.
Saya acknowledges, too, that she had not dealt with her disappointment about the Tokyo loss, or the "deep emotions" about Kai's accident.
"BMX was my life, [and] Kai was also a big part of that and I had lost that," she says. "There was just an accumulation of a lot of those emotions that I brought into the 2022 season."
Her first step to recovery was getting help for her injury. In July 2022, after a third concussion a month earlier, a sponsor paid for her to attend a concussion centre in Switzerland.
Specialists discovered issues with Saya's eye movement and that she had a type of vertigo, both of which were contributing to problems with her neck.
She received treatment and returned to Australia physically healthier, but the fear remained.
Her psychologist triggered a breakthrough. Saya had watched none of the footage from her Tokyo campaign, unwilling to relive her disappointment. The psychologist suggested it was time.
One day, Saya sat down with her mother, tears in her eyes, and watched the footage. For months, she had told herself she had been robbed, that Tokyo was meant to be her moment.
But as she watched, Saya writes in her soon-to-be-released book, Just Go, she realised that stark reality: she was not good enough.
"I gave it my all, but I wasn't consistent, I didn't have enough endurance to get around the track and I wasn't the best racer there. It was heartbreaking, but it was the truth."
A lot of soul-searching and mindset training ensued, helping Saya overcome the inner voice that told her racing equalled crashing. "It took a lot of effort to change that belief to something new, like racing equals fun, which I didn't believe at all at the time."
And she had Kai's example: getting up every day to tackle his painful rehabilitation. Never giving up.
Gradually, the fear shifted from pole position in Saya's mind to something she could manage — and the drive to compete returned.
"I didn't want to leave feeling bitterness towards BMX and being angry at BMX for what it's done," she says. "If I was going to finish BMX, I wanted it to be feeling grateful for the sport."
Saya was bound for the Paris Olympics.
'We did it': The golden moment
Kai Sakakibara was watching in the stands as his sister lined up for the Olympic final.
She had ridden beautifully throughout the meet, winning every heat, but the Sakakibaras knew all too well that nothing was assured.
"I felt confident," Kai says. "But I know there's always a chance of something going wrong, her crashing or something like that. So, I wasn't trying to get my hopes too far."
It took just over 34 seconds for those hopes to become a reality. Saya was ahead the entire race and crossed the finish line a gold medallist, falling into the arms of Romain, who had just won bronze for France.
But it was her reunion with Kai after the medal ceremony that captured hearts.
Saya ran straight to her big brother. They hugged, they cried, and through her tears, Kai recalls Saya saying: "We did it! We did it!"
Saya says Kai is her inspiration. He was always her leader on the BMX track, she says, but his courage and motivation to retrain his body and rebuild his life after the accident have had a profound impact on her.
"You're not supposed to give up, and you're not supposed to just throw in the towel," she says.
Kai is not just walking and talking now; he's back on the bike. He's swapped BMX for the velodrome and in April this year, was crowned Australian champion in the Para C1 1000m time trial.
He would love to make the 2028 Los Angeles Paralympics. "My goal is to just keep on training, keep working harder, and see where life takes me," he says.
For Saya, the World Championships in Brisbane next year beckon. It is the one big title she has not secured, a prize that comes with the honour of wearing a rainbow jersey for the season.
Saya Sakakibara may not be a fearless girl, but she has become a fierce competitor and her ambition is clear: "I want that rainbow jersey."
Watch the Australian Story 'Ride of Her Life' tonight at 8 (AEDT) on ABCTV and ABC iview.
