Team GB star Kye Whyte is stretched off the course by medics after crashing out of the BMX Racing semi-final run 2 at the Olympic Games

 Kye Whyte has crashed out of the BMX Racing semi-final run 2 and has been stretched off the course by medics. 

Whyte made Olympic history in 2021 by securing Team GB's first-ever medal in the sport and was looking to further his collection at this summer's tournament. 

However, Whyte had been struggling with a back injury which he said was aggravated last night after the three quarter-final runs - according to The BBC. 

In an interview with Mail Sport earlier this year, Whyte was reeling off the list of bones he has broken from racing his BMX bike. 

'Two shoulders, two collarbones, a couple of fingers, my hand twice, my wrist twice, my elbow and toes,' said the Olympic silver medallist. 'Oh, and my jaw as well.'

That last injury he mentioned was actually the most serious of them all, following a horror crash in his first race on the British talent squad at the age of 13.

'I probably could have died,' admitted Whyte, sitting with Mail Sport in the kit room by the BMX track at the National Cycling Centre in Manchester.

'Someone crashed in front of me and I tried to move out of the way in mid-air and I crashed and knocked myself out. I was racing in Crewe and when I woke up I was in Liverpool and my mum and dad were there, so I knew it must have been serious.

'I was in an induced coma for about five days. I had a bleed on the brain. Half the left side of my face was gone away. I missed a whole year of school. It took me about a year and a half before I started to ride again.'

Given everything he had described, it felt important to ask the question: why put yourself through it? 'I ask myself the same thing every morning,' laughs the 24-year-old. 'I'm not a dangerous person — I just like to ride a bike very fast.' 

He has been doing so since the age of three, when he first joined his older brothers Daniel and Tre — who went on to become a world bronze medallist himself — on the track at Brockwell Park near Brixton, south London. The sport helped keep Whyte on the straight and narrow. 

'It was kind of a normal childhood life… except the massive gangs around,' he says about growing up on a council estate in Peckham. 'But I was never troubled by the gangs because I was kind of known as the BMX kid, always getting asked to do wheelies. In my friendship group, a lot of us made it past that to go on and succeed.' 

More to follow...