SOUTH JORDAN, Utah — A building in South Jordan is putting Utah on the map for BMX freestylers and Olympians.
The country's first-ever BMX Freestyle Olympic Training Facility was designed and built this year to prep Olympians for Paris.
"It's very rare. There's only a few around the world with a full course," said Joe Sirlin.
Sirlin is the founder of COR-athlete. He has a construction and event planning background and knew he wanted to build an Olympic course at home.
USA Cycling hired the team at COR-athlete to build the facility for the 2024 BMX Freestyle program in hopes of giving riders a competitive advantage needed at high stakes events such as the Olympics.
"We needed space, we needed local support, we needed the building owner with the willingness to support it," he explained.
They found the facility in October and got the green light in December. They had to have everything done by March by the time the athletes arrived to train.
Sirlin said normally, that kind of facility would take four months to a year to design and build.
"We had basically six weeks," he said.
They also had to ensure the building could fit certain characteristics of the sport.
"The first one is the height of the ceiling. If you can see here, they have 34-foot ceilings for clearance. These riders that are riding things like this can darn near get up to that," Sirlin said.
He said they made the tight timeline happen just in time for March.
Six of the USA BMX Freestyle Olympians trained in the facility to get ready for Paris.
"It's gotten a ton of good feedback. We have riders that wanted to move here because of this. We're working really hard to actually keep this permanently," said Sirlin.
BMX is a new sport to the Olympics. This summer is only its second appearance in the games.
The team that trained in South Jordan will compete in the qualifications this Tuesday, July 30, and the finals will be the next day on July 31.
