Cycling at the 2008 Beijing Summer Games:

Thirty-two riders started the first men’s Olympic BMX event. The 32 riders rode two rounds of qualifying with the best round for each cyclist seeding the riders into the quarter-finals. The quarters consisted of two heats of three races, with points awarded for each race, and the top four finishers from each heat advancing to the semi-finals. In the semis, three races were again contested, with the top four riders in each heat advancing based on points. The final was a single race, over the 350 metre course.

The favorite was Latvian World Champion Maris Strombergs. Strombergs placed first in both his quarter and semi, to gain the coveted #1 gate slot for the start of the final. He was pushed in the final by Americans Mike Day and Donny Robinson. All three finished within a second, several bike lengths ahead of the other finishers, who were all involved with or held up by crashes, but Strombergs prevailed for the gold medal, Day taking silver, and Robinson bronze.