Rim Nakamura has added a new first to a career already filled with them: the first men’s BMX Freestyle Park gold medal awarded at an Asian Games.
Nakamura won the men’s final on September 27 at the Aichi International Exhibition Center during the 20th Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya. Nineteen-year-old Japanese teammate Kaede Ozawa took silver, giving Japan the top two places. The Japanese Olympic Committee confirmed the one-two finish in its same-day Games report.[1]
The result carried more symbolism than an ordinary continental title. BMX Freestyle Park was making its Asian Games debut. Before the Games opened, Nakamura had said he wanted to become the discipline’s first champion. He also entered the September 19 opening ceremony as one of Team Japan’s two flag bearers.[2][3]
A world title, seven consecutive national championships, fifth place at both Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024—and now a home Asian Games gold—form the outline of one of Japan’s most important careers in a sport that barely existed inside the Olympic system when Nakamura was a child.
A Japanese one-two in a new Asian Games event
BMX Freestyle Park is a judged discipline performed on a course of ramps, quarter pipes, banks, spines and other obstacles. It is distinct from BMX Racing: riders are not trying to cross a finish line first. Instead, judges evaluate difficulty, originality, style, execution, landings, use of the course and overall control during timed runs.[4]
The Aichi-Nagoya schedule placed qualifying on September 26 and the men’s and women’s park finals on the morning of September 27. JOC’s schedule lists the finals from 9:30 a.m. at the Aichi International Exhibition Center.[5]
Nakamura finished first, Ozawa second. In the women’s event, Kaede’s younger sister Miharu Ozawa won silver. Japan therefore closed the discipline’s Asian Games debut with a men’s one-two and a women’s silver medal.[1]
Rim Nakamura, 24, from Kyoto to the world stage
The JOC lists Nakamura as born on February 9, 2002, and affiliated with Wing Arc 1st. His official Japanese name is 中村 輪夢, read Nakamura Rimu.[6]
His sponsor’s biography traces his BMX connection to early childhood. Nakamura’s father was a BMX rider, and Rim began riding at age three. He dominated children’s categories, turned professional while still in junior high school, finished seventh as the youngest entrant at the 2017 World Championships, and in 2019 became the first Japanese male rider to reach a BMX Freestyle World Cup podium when he finished second at FISE Hiroshima. He also placed second at the X Games that year.[7]
His career therefore did not begin after BMX became an Olympic event. It developed in parallel with the sport’s rapid institutional transformation.
From freestyle scene to Olympic discipline
The UCI integrated BMX Freestyle Park into its competition system in 2015. The first UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup followed in 2016, and the inaugural UCI Urban Cycling World Championships crowned world champions in 2017. That same year, the International Olympic Committee approved BMX Freestyle Park for the Tokyo 2020 program.[8]
The event made its Olympic debut in Tokyo in 2021. The UCI described BMX Freestyle Park as the first judged cycling discipline ever to appear at the Olympic Games.[9]
That distinction matters. Most cycling competition is decided by time, distance or finishing order. In park, two riders can use the same ramp in entirely different ways. The line a rider chooses, the height of an air, the originality of a trick combination and the smoothness of a landing all become part of the result.
Two Olympic fifth places
Nakamura represented Japan in BMX Freestyle Park at the discipline’s Olympic debut in Tokyo and finished fifth. He finished fifth again at Paris 2024. Those results are listed on his JOC athlete profile.[6]
He has therefore been close to the Olympic podium without reaching it. That is why Nakamura framed Aichi-Nagoya not as an endpoint but as experience for Los Angeles 2028.
In comments published by the JOC before the opening ceremony, Nakamura said he wanted to become the first Asian Games champion in the newly added event and turn the distinctive pressure and atmosphere of the Games into experience toward his biggest goal: Olympic gold in Los Angeles. He also said he wanted spectators to come away thinking BMX was exciting.[2]
Abu Dhabi 2022: Japan’s first men’s world title
One of the defining moments of Nakamura’s career came in Abu Dhabi on November 13, 2022.
He scored 93.80 in the men’s BMX Freestyle Park final to win the UCI Urban Cycling World Championships. JOC described it as the first World Championship gold for a Japanese rider in BMX Freestyle since the discipline joined the Olympic program.[10]
That victory changed the reference point for Japanese BMX. The country no longer merely had a rider capable of reaching global finals; it had a world champion.
Seven straight national titles
Nakamura’s domestic record is equally striking. At the October 2025 Japanese national championships, he scored 93.80 to win for a seventh consecutive year and an eighth time overall. Kaede Ozawa was second with 84.60.[11]
One month earlier, at the 2025 Asian Championships in Fukuoka, Nakamura had scored 93.00 to win the men’s park title, with Ozawa again second. The Aichi-Nagoya one-two did not appear from nowhere. The same pair had already occupied the top two positions at major domestic and continental competition.[12]
Kaede Ozawa is becoming more than the rider behind Nakamura
Ozawa was born on September 7, 2007. JOC lists him as 19 at the opening of the Aichi-Nagoya Games and affiliated with International Pacific University.[13]
The progression is visible in their shared results. At the 2022 national championships, a 15-year-old Ozawa finished second to Nakamura with 72.62 points. He was second again at the 2025 nationals, then second at the Asian Championships, and now an Asian Games silver medalist.[14]
The order is familiar, but the meaning has changed. A teenage prospect has become a continental medalist standing directly behind a former world champion. Japan’s men’s BMX Freestyle program increasingly looks like more than a one-rider story.
The flag bearer became the champion
On August 26, the JOC selected Nakamura and wrestler Akari Fujinami as Team Japan’s flag bearers for the Aichi-Nagoya opening ceremony. Eight days after carrying the flag into the Games, Nakamura won gold in a discipline that had never before been contested at the Asian Games.[3]
That choice itself reflected BMX Freestyle’s changing status in Japanese sport. This is not a discipline with the domestic institutional history of judo, swimming, athletics or baseball. Yet one of its riders was asked to represent the entire national delegation.
Why judged BMX is so unforgiving
BMX Park does not reward the single hardest trick in isolation. The UCI describes judging in terms including difficulty, originality, style and execution. Riders also need clean landings, control and creative use of the field of play.[4]
That creates an inherent tension. Raising difficulty increases scoring potential and failure risk at the same time. A conservative run may lack enough originality or amplitude; an all-or-nothing sequence can disappear with one crash.
Elite park riding is therefore closer to composing a performance than assembling a checklist. Tricks must connect. Speed must be preserved. The rider must use enough of the course to demonstrate range while still leaving space for the most important combinations.
Aichi-Nagoya is one step toward Los Angeles
An Asian Games title does not forecast an Olympic medal. BMX Freestyle’s global field extends far beyond Asia, and the sport changes quickly as riders develop new tricks and higher-risk combinations. Course design, injuries and one failed landing can transform a final.
But a home multi-sport Games offers a different kind of preparation. Nakamura entered Aichi-Nagoya carrying the visibility of a flag bearer and the expectation attached to a former world champion. Before the competition he said he wanted to turn that unusual pressure into experience. He then won.
For Nakamura, the result becomes another step toward Los Angeles 2028.
For Japan, the more intriguing picture may be the podium itself: Rim Nakamura first, Kaede Ozawa second. The inaugural Asian Games champion has a younger Japanese rider coming behind him.
