Half of the side of my face had gone. I could have died
BMX star Kye Whyte on his horror crash as a teenager
KYE WHYTE is 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,’ says the Olympic silver medallist. ‘ Oh, and my jaw as well.’
That last injury he mentions 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,’ admits 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 has just described, it begs the question: why does he put himself through it? ‘I ask myself the same thing every morning,’ laughs the 24year- 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.’
One of those friends is Reiss Nelson, the winger currently chasing the Premier League title with Arsenal. ‘I met him when I was six or seven, just from playing in the area,’ explains Whyte. ‘He can actually do wheelies as well! We still speak on a regular basis.’
Whyte loves his nickname of ‘The Prince of Peckham’, which he was given after his silver medal success at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. But he is not a fan of the TV series most associated with the south-east London district.
‘Is that with the short guy and the tall guy?’ he asks following a question about Only Fools and Horses.
Whyte remains loyal to his roots, often found coaching at Peckham BMX Club, which his father Nigel founded. And he will never forget the sacrifices his dad and mum Tracey — who was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2021 but is now in remission — made for him to reach the top.
‘They did everything they could to get us to races — working extra jobs, borrowing money,’ he says. ‘ They even slept in the car sometimes on race weekends.’
Life became easier when Whyte, who is now a National Lotteryfunded athlete, moved north to Manchester aged 17 to train with the British senior squad full-time. Just four years later, he was standing on an Olympic podium — not that he wants to watch the Tokyo race back when Mail Sport brings it up on YouTube.
‘Ah man, bad memories, I should have won,’ he says before commentating on the video on the laptop
in front him. ‘I was winning at the start here, then this first jump I messed up, which put me into second. Then I made another mistake here going into the second turn.
‘I was happy because I got a medal. I was only ranked seventh and I was the youngest there. But I was sad because I knew I was winning and could have won. It crushed me a little bit.’ Whyte, who finished just 0.114 seconds behind Dutchman Niek Kimmann, was still the first British athlete to ever claim an Olympic BMX medal. And 11 minutes later, Beth Shriever became the second by winning the women’s race, with Whyte memorably picking his exhausted team-mate up off the track to join in her celebrations. ‘I was happier for her than I was for myself,’ he admits. ‘After she won, I said, “You need to go to the finish line to celebrate, that’s where all the cameras are, you need to have your moment”. ‘She was like, “I can’t walk”. She couldn’ t even speak really. So I just picked her up and walked her to the finish line.’
It remains one of Team GB’s defining images from Tokyo and that day not only transformed Whyte’s life, but BMX in this country as a whole. ‘We gained a lot more spectators and got a lot more kids involved, and that was always our plan,’ he says. ‘I went on to do red carpets and TV shows. Just being recognised and invited to stuff was unreal.’
Whyte’s most notable invite came from ITV to be a contestant on Dancing on Ice. ‘ It was mental but I enjoyed it a lot,’ he says. ‘The training was really hard.
‘You do 30 hours of ice skating with a coach even before you meet your partner. I was training at 6am every day.’
Whyte reached the semifinals of the popular 2022 show and just four months later secured a world silver medal back on his BMX.
Last year, he failed to reach the final of the World Championships in Glasgow. But he has returned to form this season, claiming his first World Cup gold in five years in Brisbane in February.
HE is now preparing for this week’s World Championships in South Carolina, USA — but knows the bigger prize awaits in Paris in August.
‘even if I were to win the worlds seven times in a row, I don’t think anyone would even notice,’ adds Whyte. ‘The Olympics is where you get noticed. It’s the biggest thing in the world. Gold is the aim and hopefully that’s what I will come back with.’
Kye Whyte receives funding from the National Lottery, who raise more than £30million a week for good causes from grassroots to elite level. This is essential to help on his pathway to Paris 2024. Find out more at: lotterygoodcauses.org.uk