Connor Fields competes in the Cycling BMX - Men's Quarterfinals at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games on Aug. 18, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In 2016, Connor Fields pulled away from the field at the final turn and cruised across the finish line to win his first Olympic gold medal in BMX racing.
On Tuesday, he simply rolled out of bed.
“First time I’ve ever won a championship by waking up and checking Twitter,” the Las Vegas native, 28, tweeted earlier today.
Following the cancelation of the final two races, Fields and fellow American Alise Willoughby were named the respective UCI BMX Supercross World Cup champions based on their rankings at the end of the abbreviated 2020 season.
The men had raced three times this season and the women twice before the circuit shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Fields finished first at the opener in February in Shepparton, Australia, then turned around and won the next day at the same location. The next month he held the top spot after the first round in Bathurst, Australia, and when the rest of the competition was canceled due to dangerous weather, that result was made final.
“My whole focus was to ride the fastest lap time that I possibly could and do that in each progressive round, knowing there was a chance they’d cancel the race if they deemed it unsafe,” Fields told TeamUSA.org in March. “It absolutely blows me away how many people didn’t know the rules.”
A two-time Olympian, Fields previously won the world cup series titles in 2013.
Willoughby got off to a similarly fast start, claiming back-to-back wins in Shepparton, marking the first time she had won twice in a world cup weekend.
The 2016 Olympic silver medalist from St. Cloud, Minnesota, has been red hot since Rio, having won world titles in 2017 and 2019. The two-time Olympian, 29, now claims her first world cup season title-, snapping a four-year run by Dutch rival Laura Smulders.
The 2020 UCI BMX Supercross World Cup season was supposed to run through Rock Hill, South Carolina, in May. That event was then postponed until November, and on Tuesday it was canceled outright. Also canceled the 2020 2020 UCI BMX World Championships, which were to be held in May in Houston.
