Lauren Reynolds

A fearless Lauren Reynolds began BMX racing at just nine-years-old at the Bunbury BMX club. The talented athlete was also a competitive basketball player, however, once the IOC announced BMX on the 2008 Olympic program she decided to focus solely on racing.

Holding scholarships at both the Western Australia Institute of Sport and Queensland Academy of Sport throughout her career, Lauren made her Olympic debut at London 2012.

Leading into London, Lauren was ranked in the top 10 in the world, coming off the back of a bronze medal at the test event. She qualified ninth-fastest in the seeding run and after finishing sixth and fifth in her opening two semi-final races, a crash in her final run saw her knocked out to finish 15th overall.

A strong 2015 saw Lauren win the Oceania Championships, finish fifth at the World Championships and claim three top-eight finishes in World Cup events, including a third in Sweden.

At the end of the year Lauren had a chance to see the 2016 Games track first-hand at the Rio test event, where she claimed a fourth-place finish.

After making the final of the 2016 World Championships, where she finished eighth, she headed to her second Games in Rio. She lined up alongside fellow Aussie Caroline Buchanan in her semi-final in Rio, finishing seventh, sixth and fourth in the three races to miss out on the final and claim 11th overall.

In 2017 Lauren linked up with London Olympic medallist Sam Willoughby as coach and they set up a three-year plan leading into Tokyo. Lauren now divides her time between her WA home and San Diego’s Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Centre.

At the 2020 UCI BMX Supercross World Cup held in Shepparton, the 29-year-old achieved two top-six finishes, qualifying her a spot on her third Australian Olympic Team for Tokyo in 2021.

Lauren produced a strong showing in Tokyo by equalling Australia’s best-ever result in women’s Olympic BMX racing when she placed fifth in the final.

Competing in her third Games, Lauren delivered three consistent runs in her heat to move through to the semi-finals.

That was where her experienced showed when she fought back from a crash and seventh place in the opening run to finish second and third in the next two and book her spot in the final.

Lauren drew the inside gate in the race for gold and made a good start before losing touch with her rivals after the first corner. But she finished strongly and made up some late ground to cross the line in fifth place, which equalled  Caroline Buchanan’s fifth-place finish for Australia in the final in London.

A month later, she backed up her Olympic performance with an impressive world championships run, finishing fifth in the final. She reached the final of the 2023 UCI World Championships in Glasgow, where she finished sixth.

Lauren continues to compete on the US BMX Pro Tour, regularly achieving podium results. She is ranked in the top 10 for the UCI BMX Racing 
World Cup.

Lauren believes her years of experience in international competition will be invaluable in Paris.

"I think every BMX racer should have the same mentality for the most part,” she said. “It’s a very cut-throat sport and it is over very quickly. Things can change very quickly.

"I have got a different perspective to what I had 12 years ago and that experience I can fall back on."

Away from the BMX track, Lauren loves fishing and spends her Christmas holidays – and any other chance she gets – dangling a line off the West Australian coast with her dad.