You may have seen it in the March 3 issue of Sports Illustrated. Or perhaps the full-page spread in USA Today on May 16. It is one of Rick Engineering Company’s latest projects – and we think it’s not only a winner of a project – we think it is going to produce an Olympic winner in Beijing.

BMX - Bicycle Motocross - debuts at the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the first Olympic extreme sport. The bike-racing event, in which athletes speed around a quarter-mile track featuring jumps, banked turns and sharp curves, is anticipated to make bike racing one of the Games’ most exciting sports.

When the BMX Olympic Test Event took place in Beijing in August 2007, the difficult track immediately demonstrated to competing athletes that training would require better facilities than were currently available. The USOC launched a project to develop a world-class training track at the Olympic Training Center (OTC) in Chula Vista as quickly as possible.

The need for fast track development of the project required some exceptional efforts. The OTC, long-standing clients of ours, called us to design the project, using plans from the Beijing track. But the plans were in Chinese and did not include any height and jump dimensions; and the project had to meet City of Chula Vista municipal requirements, which included drainage and water quality, erosion control, soil treatment, safety and aesthetic demands.

Karen van Ert, Rick’s lead engineer for the project, called upon two fortuitous advantages: she had a long-standing relationship with City personnel, and she is a former skate-boarder who was able to work off the hand-drawn course design and figure out where and how the jumps, banks and curves needed to be designed.