KEY POINTS:
BEIJING - There were no spills but no thrills either for Sarah Walker in the inaugural Olympic women's BMX cycling medal race on a crash-strewn Laoshan Moto Cross track here today.
One of the pre-race favourites, the New Zealand world No 1 avoided a series of crashes to progress to the final but never threatened to challenge the precision of French duo Anne-Caroline Chausson and Laetitia le Corguille.
Third-placed American Jill Kintner was also just out of reach for Walker, who crossed the finish line in fourth, to miss the podium by all of 0.131 seconds.
"I needed a few extra metres at the end," Walker said after failing to land a medal that form had strongly suggested the 20-year-old from Kawerau was capable of.
"I wanted to be the first person to bring a BMX medal home for New Zealand, now I can be the first that missed out."
Still, as Walker regularly emphasised before her competition, podium places are more often than not determined by random selection.
Reigning world champion Shanaze Reade, of Great Britain, exemplified how it can all go horribly wrong on unforgiving layouts where the margin for error is wafer-thin.
The 19-year-old was clearly the most powerful of the original 16-strong women's field but tumbled three times over the weather-affected two-day competition, each time having no one to blame but herself.
In contrast to the more conservative Walker, Reade subscribed to the hell-for-leather approach only to scrape the asphalt bends in qualifying and the semifinals before an ignominious relegation to eighth and last in the final.
Desperate to bridge the gap on Chausson, Reade instigated a collision and came off second best.
As she had done in the three previous semifinal motos, Walker neatly avoided the fallen bodies but did not have the raw power to benefit, her problems beginning with a sluggish jumpout of gate three.
"The start was OK but the others' starts were slightly better and that's all you need in BMX," she said.
"I got pushed out the back. I tried to come under the first corner and I managed to get up to third and I thought `here we go' but the Argentinian girl (Gabriela Diaz) came underneath.
"It was a clever move, I congratulate on it but we both lost speed and a few other girls went past."
For a split second after Reade came to grief, Walker had a glimpse of bronze but Kintner's superior lines on the final bend pulled her clear.
"Jill swerved the right way, so did I, she just swerved better."
Walker could at least reflect on making her final, a goal that New Zealand's male rider Marc Willers could not reach.
The 22-year-old from Cambridge was seeded second in his semifinal group but ended a distant last, twice belatedly crossing the line after canning out.
Willers was buffeted into the barrier pads on his first run and had no sooner remounted when he was clipped again.
That eight-point allocation for tailing the field essentially ended his tilt although the prangs continued to mount up.
He was seventh second time up and saved his most dramatic exit for last when, after miscalculating a series of humps on the second straight, he catapulted over the handlebars, swan diving helmet first into the dirt.
"I just wasn't clicking today - that's racing, everything happens at once," Willers said.
"I felt good, I was ready for it but I just couldn't put it together," he said.
Latvian reigning world champion Maris Strombergs took out a final that saw two riders fail to finish, including the runnerup to Strombergs at the worlds, South African Sifiso Nhlapo.
Strombergs, who won each of his semifinal runs, shaded American Mike Day by 0.416sec, while Day's teammate Donny Robinson won the bronze.
- NZPA
