North Vancouver's James Palmer will be one of four riders to represent Canada at the 2014 UCI BMX World Championships scheduled for July 23-27 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
This will be the 19-year-old's first trip to the senior world championships as a member of Canada's national team — he rode as a local entrant when Victoria hosted the championships in 2007 and as a member of Canada's junior elite team in 2012.
Palmer grew up loving to ride anything on two wheels, bicycles and dirt bikes included, but his career path was narrowed when a demand from his mother forced him to choose pedals over horsepower.
"Basically my mom didn't want me to race motorcross," he says. "This was a great alternative."
When he was six years old Palmer won the first ever BMX race he entered. That got him hooked. "That was a big motivator for me to just keep riding," he says. "It made me happy."
He hasn't stopped winning since. Palmer started out racing at Ridge Meadows BMX and then was able to keep it closer to home when a new track opened up at North Vancouver's Inter River Park seven years ago. Last year, his first as an elite senior rider, Palmer finished second at the Canadian championships and then proved his consistency by earning the title of BMX Canada's National No. 1 Pro by scoring the most points in a national racing series.
When he is not jetting around the world competing in races the Argyle grad studies human kinetics at Capilano University. Last month his travels took him to Abbotsford for an intense, two-day training camp used to pick the riders that would get to go to the world championships. Olympian Tory Nyhaug earned his way to the championships through his high world ranking so the camp was held to whittle a field of nine other elite Canadians down to three riders: two picked based solely on points racked up at the camp and a third as a coach's choice. Palmer didn't leave anything to chance, racking up enough points during the time trials, sprints and race-offs to place second and guarantee his passage to Rotterdam.
"The first day was super tiring," Palmer says. "We had some hot days out there. The second day was the more important day and we were all kind of blown out, but the time trial was worth a good amount and I was able to put down two solid laps and win both."
The teenager says he was riding high after making his first senior squad for a world championship.
"It's incredible. It's a good feeling, especially knowing that we put so much work into it the past two years. It's kind of a weight off the shoulders knowing that you've actually been selected now. It's awesome."
Palmer is hoping to race his little bike all the way to the Olympic Games. The sport wasn't even an official Olympic event when he started riding but it's been a highly popular showpiece since it debuted in Beijing in 2008.
"In 2008 I was more excited about just watching it on TV for basically the first time," says Palmer. "A couple of years after that it kind of set in that it was something that I actually wanted to do and wanted to strive for."
As of last month Palmer was ranked No. 60 in the world, the second-highest Canadian after fifth-ranked Nyhaug, and he now trains six days a week and is perfecting new riding strategies to push him farther up the world leaderboard.
"My strategy is just to be as relaxed as possible. A big thing we've been working on is called 'easy speed,' where if you're relaxed you're going to be faster than if you're too intense or feeling like you need to go too fast. A big thing for me is to stay relaxed and have fun. . . . In those big races where you're looking for a good result it's sometimes hard to stay relaxed."
It also can be hard to relax in a high-flying sport that can result in a bonebreaking crash at any time. Palmer calls himself lucky because he has only broken four bones in his career.
"I'm actually pretty fortunate," he says. "I did have one bad year where I broke the same collarbone three times. . . . But I was able to come back strong from each one of those injuries. It was cool."
The action heats up for Palmer next week when he hits Berlin for a World Cup Supercross, which will be the first opportunity for riders to rack up points in the race for Olympic qualification. Palmer has his sights set on making it to Rio in 2016 and knows that he'll need to perform well to earn a chance to go for gold. That individual obligation is what he loves most about the sport.
"You don't have to rely on anybody else to do well or to push you, it's really just you against the other riders," he says. "You come on that day and it's all about yourself. You motivate yourself. We train together but you're always pushing yourself. You're not relying on anyone else to push you or to do something for you."
