BMX Rider
Hannah Roberts
Hannah Roberts is an American BMX park rider from Michigan with multiple UCI BMX freestyle world titles and an Olympic silver medal from Tokyo 2020.
Updated 3 min read740 words
Hannah Roberts is an American BMX park rider from Michigan. She is the most successful rider in the history of women's contest BMX freestyle, with multiple UCI world titles beginning in 2017 and an Olympic silver medal from the Tokyo 2020 Games, held in 2021. She was the dominant figure in the women's discipline during the period when it moved onto the world stage.
Early life and background
Roberts was born in South Bend, Indiana, in 2001 and grew up in Buchanan, Michigan, a small town near the Indiana border. She started riding BMX as a young child. Her family had a connection to the sport through her cousin, the professional rider Brett Banasiewicz, and she spent much of her early riding at an indoor skatepark associated with him. Indoor access mattered in a region with long, cold winters, and it let her ride ramps year-round.
By her early teens she was competing against adult women and often beating them. Women's BMX freestyle had very few organised contests at the time, so she also rode in open and amateur categories and built her skills in a mostly male environment.
Career
Roberts' career lines up almost exactly with the rise of women's park riding as an organised discipline. When the UCI held its first BMX freestyle park world championship in 2017, she entered the women's event aged 16 and won. That made her the first women's world champion in the discipline and set up the next phase of her career.
She went on to win the world title again more than once in the following years, and she won repeatedly at major international contests including FISE events and other UCI World Cup rounds. For several seasons she was the clear favourite at every event she entered. She has also competed at the X Games when a women's park event has been included.
BMX freestyle park was added to the Olympic programme for Tokyo 2020. Roberts qualified as one of the favourites. In the final, held in 2021, she posted a strong first run but was overtaken by Charlotte Worthington of Great Britain, who landed a 360 backflip, and Roberts finished with the silver medal. She was still a teenager at the time.
Roberts continued competing after Tokyo, adding further world championship results and contest wins. She competed again at the Paris 2024 Olympics but did not finish on the podium.
Riding style
Roberts rides a park course with speed and height. Her runs are built around big airs on the quarter pipes and box jumps, with 360s, tailwhips and whip combinations, flairs and transfer airs between obstacles. She has been a leader in adding harder spin and whip variations to women's contest riding.
Her approach is methodical. She plans runs that cover the whole course, mixes lip tricks and airs, and focuses on landing cleanly. In a judged format, that combination of difficulty and consistency is what produced her long run of wins.
She has also pushed the women's field forward by riding at the scale of the men's events, taking the same transfers and the same heights rather than scaled-down lines.
Video parts and notable moments
Roberts' career has been built on contests rather than video parts, in line with most park riders of the Olympic era. Key moments include:
- Winning the first women's UCI BMX freestyle park world championship in 2017 at the age of 16.
- Repeat world championship titles in later years.
- Multiple wins at FISE and other UCI World Cup rounds.
- The silver medal in women's park at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, held in 2021.
- Competing at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Legacy and influence
Roberts was the standard-bearer for women's BMX freestyle as it became an international sport. Her level of riding gave the women's events credibility with contest organisers, broadcasters and the Olympic movement at a time when the discipline was still being argued for.
She also raised the technical ceiling. Tricks that were rare in women's contests when she started, such as 360 variations and tailwhips, became expected because she was doing them. Younger riders now enter the sport with those tricks as the baseline.
Alongside riders such as Logan Martin on the men's side, she is one of the central figures of Olympic BMX freestyle and of the shift from a video and jam culture towards a structured competitive sport.
Related
Frequently asked questions about Hannah Roberts
How many world titles has Hannah Roberts won?
She has won the UCI BMX freestyle park world title several times, starting with the first women's edition in 2017 when she was 16. The exact number depends on the year you check.
Did Hannah Roberts win an Olympic medal?
Yes. She won the silver medal in women's BMX freestyle park at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, held in 2021, the first time the discipline appeared at the Games.
How did Hannah Roberts start riding BMX?
She grew up in Michigan and started riding as a child, spending much of her early riding time at an indoor skatepark connected to her family, which gave her year-round access to ramps.
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