GRATITUDE

At the start gate in the biggest race of her career, newly crowned BMX world champion Caroline Buchanan battled a dangerous thought.

Am I good enough?

She won the World Cup in May of 2012 in front of family and fans, still relatively unknown to the general public. In two months she would come out of obscurity and into the Olympics.

On YouTube you can see the replay. She stands on her pedals assessing the eight-metre drop into the London Olympic track for the last time. She’s mean-looking, tapping her tyre on the gate like an abused tiger eyeing her trainer. Behind her racing goggles she checks her future, running through the 35-second track. She knows it intimately, having dominated the event from the first heats. A good release and it’s gold for the Aussie. You understand conventional narrative, so even if you don’t know the outcome, you can see where this is going. Behind her goggles comes that dangerous thought.

“Going into the Olympics, the heats, the final, I didn’t have this sense that I was enough; that I had enough to