Meet Hannah Roberts, the LGBTQ+ BMX rider heading to the Paris 2024 Olympics
BMX rider Hannah Roberts is competing for Team USA at the Paris Olympics. (Getty)
As the Paris 2024 Olympics are set to begin in just a few weeks, there are a number of out LGBTQ+ athletes participating that should be on your radar – and one of them is Hannah Roberts.
Roberts is a BMX rider who is going for gold in this year’s Olympics, and one of three BMX freestyle athletes who is proudly out and identifying as LGBTQ+.
Competing for Team USA, Roberts is a heavy favourite to medal in her event – if not take the gold, and will be competing against two other LGBTQ+ athletes in Paris.
One of them is Perris Benegas, Roberts’ Team USA teammate, who is also gay. Benegas came out in 2021 on Instagram.
The other is Natalya Diehm, an Australian BMX rider, who realised she was gay when she was at school.
It is unclear when Roberts first came out publicly as gay, but she has been vocal about her identity for many years while competing as an athlete.
When did Hannah Roberts start riding BMX bikes?
Roberts grew up in Buchanan, Michigan, and began riding BMX at the age of 9.
According to her USA Cycling biography, Roberts got into BMX freestyle because of her cousin, who was one of the top riders in the United States.
Roberts entered her first BMX competition when she was 12 and became the first-ever BMX freestyle world champion at the UCI World Championships in China at the age of 17.
She has since won two more world titles, in 2019 and 2021 respectively.
Has she been to the Olympics before?
The 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics was the first time BMX freestyle was included as an event, a sister event to the BMX race that was added to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
Roberts became the first American to qualify after clinching the top spot in USA cycling rankings.
Two Americans per gender can qualify for BMX freestyle at the Olympics.
Roberts was a favourite to win during the Tokyo Olympics but after a poor landing on her second run, she won a silver medal with her score – beaten out by Team GB’s Charlotte Worthington.
After her run in Tokyo, she told USA Cycling: “I knew that there were some things that I could do to improve my score and hopefully take that gold back. I messed up in the moment. That’s all it is.”
In a recent interview with Olympics.com, Roberts lamented not getting gold in Tokyo.
She said: “When you only focus on one thing, it takes priority over your entire life. Obviously I didn’t win, I got silver, which is still an amazing accomplishment, but, I never truly enjoyed the silver in 2021. I barely got my medal out, I just couldn’t understand how I could focus so hard and not get gold.”
Even though she was disappointed back then, she has a different view on it now. She said: “You know, I finally understood there was just much too much on me mentally and I was just carrying too much pressure (in Tokyo). Now I can finally look back and be like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s pretty cool, I’m the only person in the world that has an Olympic silver for women’s BMX freestyle’.”
What is it like for Hannah Roberts to be a queer BMX rider?
Roberts is very proud of who she is as an athlete and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
Roberts previously said: “Being queer in my sport, freestyle is in the name. My riding is a very easy way to express myself. I put myself and my soul into my riding and I really hope it shows when I’m competing.”
If she could give any advice to fellow LGBTQ+ people out there, it would be to “be true to who you are”.
In a video for On Her Turf, she said: “You’re perfect in your own way. Whatever you want to do, you can. The hate you get on the internet from just existing can ruin confidence, it’s not worth it.”
Is she married?
Roberts was married until 2022, when she and her then-wife decided to split up.
“I was going through a divorce the end of 2022, and it led to a lot of 2023 just dividing certain things. We had dogs and stuff that we had to split, and that was hard. We had other financial things to figure out. And I was dealing with all of that almost every time that I was off the bike,” she told Olympics.com.
The divorce had a detrimental effect on Roberts’ BMX performance because she was finding it difficult to find time to ride while dealing with all admin that comes with a separation.
Roberts explained: “I’ve always been okay at being able to just clear my mind when I’m on my bike. But there was a lot less time spent on my bike because I was trying to get everything figured out.”
Roberts is adamant that it “wasn’t anybody’s fault” but that it was “a very long, drawn out process” to figure out how the couple go go their separate ways.
She added: “Marriage is great, divorce sucks, that’s really what I’ve been going through the last two years.”
You can read all of our Paris Olympics 2024 coverage here.
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