BMX Racing might have been part of the Olympic Games since 2008, but it wasn't until 2020 that the freestyle discipline of BMX became an Olympic event.

And maybe even less expected was a gold medal for an Australian.

Logan Martin, who qualified for the games by virtue of Australia being a nation ranked between second and fifth in the world at freestyle BMX, and by winning the national championships in 2020 - a feat he also pulled off in 2019 and 2021 - certainly didn't head to Tokyo as the raging favourite, although a super performance saw him win the freestyle park BMX event at the 2021 World Championships in Montpellier.

Whether that form was going to be enough to starve off the best in the world for Olympic gold though was always going to be a tough question to answer. Before his 2021 World Championships performance, he had only managed two medals at the World Championships, being gold in 2017 at Chengdu and a silver at the same location in 2019.

A handful of other medals in the X Games meant he went in with plenty of hopes, but those medals came well before the Games in 2018 and 2019.

But come the Olympics, Martin put on the ride of his life to blow the rest of his competition to smithereens.

One of a host of sports that are subjective - rather than objectively - measured at the Olympic Games, which is being increasingly skewed towards performance, Martin aced the seeding round to win by over three points.

In freestyle BMX, each rider has two runs in the seeding round, and two runs in the final round, with judges scoring the riders on each run out of 99.99 with that score assessing the riders execution and difficulty of the ride.

In the seeding round, where the two scores provide an average, Martin scored 91.9 on Run 1, and 90.04 on Run 2 for an average of 90.97.

His closest competitor was Rim Nakamura from Japan, who only managed to average 87.67, and in fact, in the entire seeding round, Martin was the only rider with a single run to score over 90, let alone both.

The final round, which has the start order determined off the seeding round, only sees a single score retained for the rider - their best out of two runs.

That was probably a piece of luck for Martin, who took all the pressure off by smashing a score of 93.3 in his first run. Daniel Dhers of Venezuela was the only other rider to score over 90, but at 90.1, it was clear everyone else in the field had plenty of catching up to do.

Martin's second run was only a score of 41.4, but it didn't matter. Dhers held onto his second place with an improved effort, scoring 92.05, while Declan Brooks of Great Britain scored 90.8 and Kenneth Tencio scored 90.5, moving them within striking distance of the Australian, but his run of 93.3 simply couldn't be caught.

Martin, who has celebrated his 30th birthday since the 2021 Games, will head to Paris aiming to defend his gold medal after qualifying as Australia's athlete once again.

The BMX events will be held on July 30 and July 31, with the men's qualification kicking off at 11:12 pm (AEST) on the 30th, and the final starting at 10:45 pm (AEST) the following day.

In the 20 days leading up to the 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony on the River Seine in Paris, All Sport will be looking back at the biggest Australian moments from the last Olympic Games, held under COVID conditions in Tokyo. From gold medals to heartbreaking moments, it's sure to play out again during 2024.