Canada's Tory Nyhaug gets 18th seed in men's BMX cycling
Quarter-finals set for Thursday at 12:30 p.m. ET
By Jonathan Rumley, CBC Sports
Canada's Tory Nyhaug pedalled his way to the 18th spot in the seeding run for men's BMX cycling at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
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Nyhaug traversed through the Olympic BMX Centre course in 35.422 seconds, which was 0.805 seconds behind the top seed — 25-year-old Joris Daudet of France, the reigning world champion.
"Everybody is focused on this event. Everybody has the experience, too," Daudet said.
Switzerland's David Graf and Sam Willoughby of Australia claimed the second and third seeds, respectively, after finishing with a time within a second of the leader's result.
"I made a couple of mistakes in the time trial," Nyhaud admitted after his run. "We learned a lot and we'll be ready for racing tomorrow."
Right before Nyhaug was set to do his run, Latvia's Ezdus Treimanis crashed his bike near the beginning of the course and did not finish as he appeared shaken up by the incident.
Nyhaug, a 24-year-old cyclist from Coquitlam, B.C., is Canada's lone BMX rider in Rio. Nyhaug has represented Canada at the 2012 London Olympics, where he finished 18th, and won gold at the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto.
In total, 32 men rode across the up-and-down artificial track to determine seeding for the quarter-finals, which are set to begin Thursday at 12:30 p.m. ET (watch live on cbc.ca/olympics and the CBC Rio 2016 app).
With files from The Associated Press