Zoé Claessens wins first Swiss Olympic BMX racing medal
Zoé Claessens with Switzerland's first BMX racing medal
Keystone / Laurent Gillieron
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening: Zoé Claessens wins first Swiss Olympic BMX racing medal
Zoé Claessens is the first Swiss Olympic medallist in BMX racing. The 23-year-old from Vaud won bronze in Paris on Friday. Cédric Butti came fourth in the men’s race.
Claessens, who went into the competition as one of the favourites, was beaten by Saya Sakakibara from Australia and Manon Veenstra from the Netherlands.
“A dream comes true. Things didn’t go as planned at the beginning. I’m only now really realising that I’ve won an Olympic medal and made Swiss history,” said Claessens, a two-time European champion and World Championship silver medallist.
Claessens in action on Friday
Keystone / Laurent Gillieron
With bronze, the daughter of BMX pioneer Vincent Claessens, who built the first BMX track and club in Switzerland together with friends in Echichens in 1983, delivered what she had expected of herself. “Of course my goal is to win a medal,” said the otherwise reserved athlete in the run-up to the event.
Earlier in the day Cédric Butti narrowly missed out on a medal in the men’s event, finishing a tenth of a second off third place.
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
More
More
Faster, higher, stronger, Swisser: let the 2024 Olympic Games begin!
This content was published on
On Friday evening 128 Swiss athletes will float down the River Seine in Paris as part of the opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Is your place of origin, your Heimatort, important to you?
Every Swiss citizen has a Heimatort, a place of origin, but many have never visited theirs. What’s your relationship with your Heimatort? What does it mean to you?
In Switzerland more people are being referred to electrical therapies or psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Are there similar approaches where you live?
Ex-sect member sentenced in Zurich for sexual abuse
This content was published on
Zurich District Court has sentenced a former member of the globally active sect "Children of God" to a partial prison sentence.
SNB chairman does not rule out slowdown in Swiss growth
This content was published on
Martin Schlegel, chairman of the Swiss National Bank (SNB), does not rule out a weakening of the Swiss economy in light of the tariff dispute.
Swiss NGOs abroad to receive 10% less federal funding
This content was published on
In 2025 and 2026, Swiss NGOs will have 10% less federal funding available for international cooperation than in the previous two-year period.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.