World champion in 2023, Romain Mahieu hopes to forget the failure of the Tokyo Olympics by winning a medal this summer at the Paris Olympics. Biography, achievements, Australia, find out who the French cyclist is.
Romain Mahieu was born on July 21, 1995 in Lille. From a very young age, at the age of four, he developed a devouring passion for BMX, so much so that he would never practice another sport seriously. Supported by his family, who believed in him, Romain Mahieu trained seriously and participated in local competitions during his adolescence. He quickly stood out and joined the Pôle Espoirs de Bourges in the early 2010s, before joining the Olympic pole of Saint Quentin en Yvelines, at the headquarters of the French Cycling Federation.
Crowned junior French champion at just 17 years old, Romain Mahieu quickly managed to join the French team but struggled to confirm at the highest level. For his first Olympic Games, in Tokyo in 2021, Mahieu qualified for the final after shining during the competition but completely missed his final and finished in sixth place. Proof of the difficulty of BMX, where you have to know how to shine on the big day during a race of less than a minute where falls are recurrent. Following this failure, Romain Mahieu chose to go and live and train in Australia for half the year (during the European winter) where his partner Saya Sakakibara, who is also a professional in BMX, is from.
The other half of the year, the couple settled in the south of France, in Sarrians (Vaucluse), in order to take advantage of ideal training conditions. A choice that paid off, since Mahieu obtained his first world champion title in 2023 in Glasgow, while winning the overall World Cup ranking with five victories (out of nine rounds). The Frenchman did not change his preparation in 2024, in order to arrive in the best conditions at Paris 2024 Olympic Gameswhere he dreams of a gold medal for himself and for his partner Saya Sakakibara.
What is Romain Mahieu’s track record?
Aged 29, Romain Mahieu had a 2023 with a first world champion title in Glasgow, while winning the overall World Cup classification. His two biggest titles at the moment. He also has a European BMX time trial champion title (2016), a French BMX champion title (2018) and a French BMX time trial champion title (2018). At the Tokyo Olympics, he only finished in 6th place.
Can Romain Mahieu beat the French BMX curse at the Olympics?
The Tokyo Olympics remain the major failure of Romain Mahieu’s career so far. Brilliant in the qualifying races, the Frenchman could only finish in sixth place and return without a medal, like his compatriots Sylvain André (4th) and Joris Daudet (7th). Another disappointment for French men’s BMX, which seems cursed since the discipline became an Olympic discipline in 2008, with still no medals obtained. The Blues achieved an unprecedented hat-trick at the Glasgow World Championships in 2023, with Romain Mahieu in gold, Arthur Pilard in silver and Joris Daudet in bronze. “A good omen before the Olympics,” according to Mahieu, who wants to put an end to this anomaly.